From The Ashes We Rise
by Cyanide-Princess-666
Summary: Sequel to Wistful Kisses! If you haven't read Wistful Kisses, then there'll be a lot in this book you won't understand! Valduggery, Ghanith, Chinomon, and some other pairings. Original characters included too!
1. Nightmares

_**From the Ashes We Rise...Chapter 1...**_

_**Okay! Here's the first chapter of the sequel, these chapters are going to be shorter than those in Wistful Kisses, but hopefully just as good! R&R as always is appreciated, and I hope you all enjoy it! **_

oO0Oo

Dust. Rubble. Screaming. Alice Pleasant woke up panting, the nightmare terrifying her as it did every night. She sat upright and rubbed her eyes, her back aching after sleeping on the uncomfortable, lumpy mattress she used as a bed.

Fifteen years had passed since Notorious came to power. Fifteen years since Alice and Valkyrie had been orphaned. Even after such a long time, Alice couldn't forget. She'd been six at the time, and she'd watched her parents burn while she remained untouched. She'd sat and screamed as a wall of black had slammed into Haggard and soaked into her family, melting them right in front of her. She always saw their faces as they died, the way they screamed, how her mother had reached for her father's hand as she died. How she'd never quite managed to get hold of him.

Alice didn't resent her sister for it. Valkyrie punished herself enough for a thousand people most of the time, and besides, without her, Al would've starved or been killed shortly after. She'd only survived because she too was magic, and Valkyrie had found her alive and crying. For some reason, the energy her Val held inside her had only killed those who were purely human.

So Alice's Great-uncle Fergus was still alive, and so were the twins, but Beryl was dead. All Valkyrie's friends were still alive, and so was Skulduggery.

oO0Oo

Speaking of Skulduggery, he entered the room with a quiet knock.

"Hey Skul," Al grinned.

"Alice," he nodded, and she felt his smile. It was easy to see why Valkyrie had fallen for him in the first place. Alice her self found him enormous fun. He was like the big brother she'd never had and a father all rolled into one.

"Where's Val?"

"Out again. Same as always." He sighed, and Alice patted the space beside her. Skulduggery tilted his head and sat down with a sigh. Even in a world that had been ruined by evil and was slowly working its way back to something resembling civilisation, Skulduggery's suits remained immaculate. He wore a light grey one today, with a black shirt and tie.

"Tell me what's wrong, Skul."

"I feel like she doesn't need me anymore." He shrugged. "We hardly speak. She's so focussed on killing Grimm that I never see her. We used to do everything together. Now I'm lucky if I see her once a day, and that's usually when she's getting up at dawn to leave again."

"You don't see her on a night?"

"Not often, no."

"You sound like you need a hug," Alice told him, and opened her arms. He sighed again and hugged her back, holding her carefully. Even through his clothes, she felt the snapped rib. It was a stark reminder of just how close to death Skulduggery had gotten at the hands of Notorious Grimm. Part of it was missing, and nobody knew where it had gone. Val herself suspected Grimm of taking it as a trophy. Alice wouldn't be surprised if Valkyrie was right.

"When is she coming back?" Alice asked when he pulled away. He tilted his head and looked at her for a moment; she looked so much like Gordon it was almost unnerving; same light, soft blonde hair, same blue eyes. But she had Melissa's features; fine bones and a creamy complexion.

"I don't know. She's normally gone until it gets dark."

"Maybe you should start going with her, Skul. Spend some time with her; don't give her a choice in it. I know you've never forced her to do anything before, but you're _married_ to her, for God's sake! You spent, like, two days being a proper wife and husband, and then all this happened. You two have never had the chance to be happy. You need to make her speak to you. Show her that this isn't her fault, Skulduggery."

"This is Valkyrie we're talking about. When does she ever listen to me?"

"It's about time she started. Make her listen, and if you don't, I will." Alice hopped out of bed and grabbed a jumper off the floor, tugging it on over her vest top, and jammed her feet into a pair of boots, before bounding off in search of her other sister, Emma.

Emma wasn't actually related to Alice, but she might as well have been. Her whole family had been killed in the Reckoning, which was what the remaining mages had come to call the day Valkyrie's power killed humanity. Ever since, Emma and Alice had been inseparable, and Skulduggery had been happy to treat Emma like his own daughter. She'd even taken Pleasant as her last name, and she called him and his wife Mum and Dad. Valkyrie hadn't really been around much to see Emma, which pissed Alice off no end.

oO0Oo

"Moo? You in here?" Alice called out, wandering into the makeshift library. The mansion had managed to withstand the worst of the Reckoning, but it hadn't gone undamaged. The last fifteen years had seen plenty of repairs, and the ballroom had been turned into a public library because China's place had been destroyed. The plus side to this was that the shelves didn't move, so no one ever got lost.

"Over here, Al," a muffled voice called from the left of the library, about four rows back. A head of curly brown hair popped out from behind one of the shelves and Emma waved at Alice, a thick book in one hand. She frowned. "You look pissed. S'up?"

"Val, as usual. She's never here. She's losing her husband and she doesn't even notice."

"In all fairness, they were married properly for, like, a day, before Grimm surfaced and killed a bunch of people. The world hasn't exactly been normal since. She hasn't really had much of a husband to lose."

"They were married for _two_ days, actually, and she spent every day with him for _eight years_, Moo. That counts for something, right? I mean, she must have loved him from day one if she didn't run away screaming."

"Yeah, she was twelve when she met him, Al. She probably thought it was one big, hilarious adventure. Anyway, you were six when you met Dad, and you didn't run away, but you're not in love with him." Emma put down the book. "Just because she didn't run away doesn't mean she fell for him straight away."

"No, I know, but he's practically my whole family all rolled into one. He's your Dad too. Admit it; we both love him in our own way, Moo."

"I know, I know." Emma bit her lip, her mind changed. "Maybe she did fall for him right away and didn't realise. Either way, it doesn't matter because she's never around."

"We need to make her listen to him. Or to us, at least. She can't keep doing this. Yeah, her power killed humanity. It killed my parents, it killed half my friends, it killed your family, but she wasn't the one controlling it. Grimm was. We get it, she feels bad, but this is ridiculous."

"Fifteen years." Moo let out a low whistle. "That's a long time to hate yourself."

"Too long," Alice agreed with a nod, and started pacing. Emma sat on the floor and opened her book again, ignoring her agitated sister for a while, just waiting for her to calm down. When she stopped pacing and slumped against shelf, Emma looked up again.

"Where's Aunt Tanith?" she asked, and Alice shrugged.

"Sulking, probably. China's been winding her up again."

"If anybody can make Mum listen, it's her." Emma always called Skulduggery and Valkyrie Mum and Dad. It'd taken Al a while to get used to it, but nowadays she barely even blinked.

"That's a good point. Any ideas where she'd be?"

"I have one, yeah," Emma said, and put down the book, holding a hand out to Alice. She took it and they vanished with a soft '_whump_'.


	2. Losing Them

_**From The Ashes We Rise...Chapter 2...**_

_**Thank you to all the wonderful people who reviewed and read Wistful Kisses, I never expected to get such a response! (': I hope you're all glad that I decided to do a sequel and not kill off all the amazing characters! You all know about copyright and whatnot so yeah, read away! **_

oO0Oo

Tanith looked up when Alice and Emma appeared in front of her, and sheathed her sword. They were outside, on the grounds of the mansion, surrounded by dead trees and half-parched grass. Tanith stood in the centre of a circle of dead foliage with a face like thunder.

"Hey guys," she said grumpily.

"Wassup Tanith?" Alice asked.

"China," was the growled reply. "Always China. I don't get why Skulduggery ever let her stay here."

"Because it's not his house, it's Mum's," Moo answered.

"He moved in with her, and she's never around. Lately it's more his house than hers, considering the amount of time she spends away from us all." Tanith forced herself to stop ranting. "What's up with you two anyway? The only time you interrupt my sulking is when you want my help."

"We want you to get Mum back home. If she spent just one day here with us she might realise how much we miss her," Emma said, her eyes cast downward.

"Val's spent too much time wallowing already, and it's time she realised just how pig sick of it we are." Alice sighed. "You're her best friend, Tan. You're the only one she ever listens to."

"If you think she ever listened to me then you're crazy," Tanith snorted, amused.

"Please?" the girls asked together, and the blonde woman wavered a little.

"Damn puppy-dog eyes," she muttered. "Fine! I'll go find her and drag her home. What time is it now?"

"Time you got a watch," Alice answered.

"Ten forty five," Emma said helpfully, rolling her eyes at her sister.

"I'll be back in an hour, with or without her." And Tanith walked away, in search of her moody best friend. Alice looked at Moo triumphantly and held up a hand. Moo raised an eyebrow at her sister, but high fived her and grinned, allowing herself a moment to share in Alice's good humour.

oO0Oo

"Valkyrie Pleasant, I swear if you don't shut up, I am going to kill you," Tanith groaned. Val was whining about almost breaking into Grimm's residence. Apparently she was close to killing him this time, and Tanith had just ruined it all.

"But I was close Tanith! I was so close and you had to drag me away!" Tanith finally snapped, grabbing the neck of Valkyrie's tunic.

"There are more important things to deal with right now than Grimm," she hissed.

"Like what?" Valkyrie growled back, anger flashing in her eyes.

"Your family. Your husband. All of us. Whether you like it or not, you are coming back with me, and you are spending time with us all. If you stop wallowing in self-hatred for more than five seconds, you might actually realise how much we miss you, Val!"

"I can see my family when Grimm is dead," she answered, her face going blank as she tried to pull away, but Tanith's grip was like iron.

"If you keep this up, there'll be no family around to see when he's dead, and then what will you do, eh? You're losing them, Val." For the first time in a long time, something clicked in Valkyrie skull.

"Losing them? What do you mean?"

"They're starting to think you don't want them anymore," Tanith said, and tried to soften her tone. Any more shouting could push the girl back into denial. "You're thirty five, and you have a family. You have a husband, you have a child, and you have a sister. You have friends. You have people who care about you, which is more than most people have now, Valkyrie. You're losing yourself, and it's killing us to see it. Come home, spend time with your husband. If not for all of us, then for him."

"But I..." she trailed off, her resolve weakening much more quickly than expected. Tanith took the opportunity to attack where it would hurt the most. She hated herself for doing it, but she had to be cruel to be kind.

"It was your anniversary two days ago. You've been married for fifteen years and two days. In that time, how long have you spent acting like you were married?" Tanith asked softly, and tears blossomed in Valkyrie's eyes.

"...Two days," she whispered, ashamed.

"And when was the last time you kissed your husband, or spent the night with him? Or even smiled at him?"

"Fifteen years ago." The tears spilled over and a sob broke loose. Tanith pulled her best friend into a hug and let her cry until the tears ran out, before holding her at arms length.

"Come home with me, Val. We all miss you, and you miss us. I know you do." She held out an arm, and Valkyrie looked at it for a long moment, before smiling and linking up with Tanith.

oO0Oo

Valkyrie was afraid; she'd missed so much in her attempts to reach Grimm. She'd missed birthdays, magical breakthroughs, funny moments, family time, arguments, even little things like somebody making her a cup of tea, or having her husband put his arms around her. She'd even missed every wedding anniversary since the Reckoning. She was a terrible wife, a horrible friend, a neglectful sister, and an unworthy mother to Emma. She'd been on a path to self destruct the moment she'd made it her goal to kill Grimm. Thank God Tanith had brought her to her senses before she lost them all.

"Skulduggery," she said, when she found her husband looking at a photograph of her in her wedding dress with his back to her. She'd looked so beautiful, a vision in black, next to a tall, dashing skeleton, holding a bouquet spilling white and black flowers, a brilliant smile on her face. It'd been the happiest day of her life. The sound of her voice made him raise his head slightly, and slowly, he put the photo down and turned to face her.

For a long while, he said nothing. He didn't speak, didn't even move. And then, finally, he opened his arms to her, and she ran to him. To her, nothing had ever felt better than being held by him after so long, than knowing that in that simple embrace, he was forgiving her for fifteen years of leaving him alone night after night, of being the worst wife she could possibly be. He just held her tight while she sobbed, one hand stroking her hair, the other flat against her back, keeping her close to him. He just let her cry, and when she finally stopped and pulled back to look at him, he remained silent.

"I'm so sorry, Skulduggery. I've been horrible for so long, I didn't mean to do this. I love you so much and I just didn't think about what I was doing to you all. I just, I felt like I needed to kill him to try and make up for the lives I took that night. I'm an awful wife and I'd understand it if you decided to leave me or if you hated me, but I swear to you, from now on I'll be here all the time and I'll treat you like I should've done right from the first day we got married. You mean everything to me and I lost sight of that when I was trying to make up for something I will never be able to make up for. It was bad enough that I helped destroy humanity, but I also went on to break apart my own family. I should never have neglected you all the way I did, and if none of you want me around anymore I'll understand." She ran out of steam and looked at her husband with glittering, tearful eyes.

"Hush now, Valkyrie. Everything is going to be alright," he said, and kissed her, so gently, for the first time in fifteen long, empty years.

oO0Oo

_**Awwwwh! :3 I enjoyed writing that! It's always good when an argument is resolved (': Until next time, Cyanide out! (':**_


	3. Homecoming

_**From The Ashes We Rise...Chapter 3...**_

_**Okay, keeping it short and sweet, the next chapter is up and hopefully there'll be some fighting somewhere along the lines in the next few chapters! :3 Enjoy!**_

oO0Oo

Emma walked into the living room to find Valkyrie in Skulduggery's arms, her face buried in his chest. Her mouth fell open; in all the years she'd spent with them, she'd never seen them hug before. She dropped her book, and it landed with a thud.

"...Mum?" she asked, and Valkyrie raised her head. She nodded. Emma waited a second, before rushing forwards and throwing herself at them both. She heard Skulduggery laugh, a sound she hadn't heard in such a long, long time, and she breathed in the scent of her family, enveloped in a hug she'd been waiting for ever since they'd taken her in.

"Moo! Where you at?" Alice called loudly, and her foot bumped against something heavy. She saw the book on the floor and stooped to pick it up, and then her eyes fell on the hugging trio and she dropped it again. "Well I'll be damned..._Valkyrie_? You're actually _home_?" Her sister sniffed and nodded, brushing dark hair out of her eyes.

"I'm home, and I'm staying here."

"No more disappearing?"

"I promise."

"No more chasing Grimm?"

"No more."

"It's good to have you back, sis," Alice grinned, and Valkyrie mirrored the expression, her heart squeezing happily. And then she frowned.

"There's something I have to tell you all," she said, and Skulduggery immediately tensed up.

"What is it?" he asked warily, stepping back out of the hug. Hurt flashed in his wife's eyes, but she pushed it down quickly and spoke through it.

"Grimm has found a way to keep the vampires in check." Nobody spoke, they just waited for her to continue. "When they shuck their skin at night, they stay as a pack, following orders. He's got them patrolling the streets."

"So why haven't they come for us yet?" Emma asked, looking out the window like she expected an army of pale skinned beasts to come pouring in.

"China's symbols," Alice said, answering for them.

"Of course. She must have heard and protected Gordon's land without telling us," Skulduggery said. "It's remarkable that even in a world where each sorcerer is lucky to survive from one day to the next, that she still hears so much."

"Speaking of whispers and rumours, why is everybody talking about me?" China asked, wandering into the living room to stand beside Alice near the door, dressed in jeans and a thick jumper, her raven black hair tied back in a quick ponytail. Of course, she looked stunning, as always.

"You heard about the vampires and you didn't tell anyone?" Alice asked, raising an eyebrow at the troublesome woman.

"I did tell someone. I told Valkyrie, right before I sealed the grounds with protective sigils." Val looked at the floor guiltily.

"I might have forgotten to mention it earlier."

"But I told you months ago." Valkyrie opened her mouth to answer but China held up a hand. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that you're home and we're all protected. Nothing short of Grimm himself could get through those symbols without permission, believe me. Well apart from us." China frowned. "Has anybody seen Solomon?"

Shadows thickened behind her and Solomon Wreath stepped out of them, cane in hand, dressed in a dashing black suit, courtesy of Ghastly. He planted a kiss on China's perfect cheek, and she rolled her eyes. "If you were anybody else, Wreath, you'd be dead by now, just for sneaking up on me," she muttered, and turned to kiss him properly.

Valkyrie watched, her heart sinking as she realised just how much she'd missed being that way with Skulduggery, and her eyes flickered to his gleaming skull. As though he could read her mind, his head tilted and he took her hand gently. She smiled at him and his fingers tightened round hers, smooth leather against cool metal.

oO0Oo

The life they'd each carved out of the Hellish remains of Ireland was a strange one. They stayed in Gordon's house, on Gordon's land, largely untouched by the chaos consuming the country. They offered safety to sorcerers that passed, those who had nowhere to go, those that, if they remained on the streets, would be dead by morning. The residents in the house changed constantly, save for Valkyrie, Skulduggery, Emma, Alice, China, Solomon, Fletcher, Tanith and Ghastly. And Echo Gordon, of course.

Erskine Ravel sometimes came to stay with them, but as Grand Mage of Ireland, he was busy trying to rebuild some kind of order. He took his daughter with him wherever he went, and she too stayed with them sometimes.

Ghastly was allowed to remain with them permanently, so that Erskine still had a member of the Council to contact when he needed to. Madame Mist was dead, and the Sanctuary in Roarhaven was nothing more than a pile of rubble, so Gordon's house had become a kind of makeshift Sanctuary. The third place on the Council was yet to be filled, but Ravel was trying his best to locate Dexter Vex and offer him the position.

Somehow, while the entire mortal population was destroyed, the sorcerers had survived, and somehow they were managing to contact one another, to survive in some kind of order. But it was still a war. The vampire population had greatly increased, thanks to Grimm, and they made life extremely difficult. It was a war between Grimm and his vampires, and the mages. So far, Grimm was in control, but neither side had managed to gain or lose any ground in the last fifteen years. The tides were even, with no sign of turning either way.

oO0Oo

Tanith parried her blade and Alice met the strike with one of her own, metal clashing and throwing sparks into the air. Tanith grinned at her opponent over their crossed swords.

"You're learning much quicker than I expected." Alice shrugged and spun, the tip of her sword just missing Tanith's hip before she danced back and turned to deliver another strike that Tanith blocked.

"Val's been teaching me a few things since she came home," Alice grunted, and rolled, coming up and lashing a kick into Tanith's knee. Tanith gasped and jumped back to give herself some room. "That, however, was Skulduggery's fault," Alice grinned.

"That skeleton is a bad influence," Tanith chuckled, and put her hand up, palm out, to ward off anymore. "You're doing well, Al. We're done here for now. You're gonna make a great fighter one day. It's just a pity that Emma doesn't want to learn."

"She's more interested in symbols. China's teaching her some stuff, and actually she's really good at it." Alice sheathed her sword and sighed. "I wish I'd seen Val fight. Her and Skul must have been incredible."

"They were, and still are. You'll be going out with them before long. The increase in vampires wandering around just makes it that little bit more dangerous for them. They need all the help they can get. As soon as you're ready, you'll see them fight, and you'll be right there with them." Tanith bit her lip, her eyebrows pulling together. "But don't be fooled, Al. It's not all fun and games. This world is dangerous, and you haven't seen much of it."

"I want to see more," Alice insisted. "I've been stuck in Gordon's house since I was six years old because of all this. The edge of the grounds is the furthest I've been for fifteen years. I'm twenty one and I still feel like a kid."

"Alice, I'm eighty five and _I_ still feel like a kid. You never really grow up, you just learn how to act in public," Tanith winked, and started walking back towards the house. Alice stayed where she was, grinning. Tanith was enormous fun, and a very bad influence, and that was why Alice liked her.

She stayed for a few more moments, practising a few blocks and a vicious strike or two, imagining herself fighting vampires in the streets by her family's side. She would've been quite content to stay that way as well, if she hadn't spotted Skulduggery leaving the grounds. She gave up training and followed in silence.


	4. Mischief

_**From The Ashes We Rise...Chapter 4...**_

_**Okie dokie, next chapters up now (: Have fun, thanks for reading and reviewing everyone! :D Special thanks to MewFullMoon for the amazing feature on her website! **_

oO0Oo

Alice kept low, dodging behind upturned cars and piles of rubble, keeping out of sight. What she didn't realise was that somebody was behind _her_, dodging and weaving to keep out of _her_ sight. She didn't realise until it was too late, and a hand clamped over her lips, cutting off her cry of alarm.

"Shut up!" Emma hissed. "You'll tip Dad off." Alice relaxed and grazed a fist against her sister's arm. "What're you doing, Al? You know if he catches you, you'll be in major trouble."

"I couldn't help it, Moo. I can't stay stuck in the grounds all the time. It's driving me insane seeing the same things day in day out-"

"What? Oh, no I don't care about that. I'm saying what're you doing leaving without me?" Emma asked, and Alice grinned. Emma was the one person she knew she could always count on.

They stalked Skulduggery in silence for a while, until he rounded a corner. They hung back, and when they went to continue following him, they stopped and frowned.

"Where'd he go, Moo?" Alice asked. Emma closed her eyes, her stomach sinking.

"I think he might be..."

"You girls are supposed to be at home," said a velvet voice.

"...Behind us," Emma finished.

"Shit," Alice muttered, scowling, and sent a vicious kick at a nearby lump of rubble. It sailed through the air and bounced off the rusting skeleton of a mini van with an echoing 'clang'. Silence lay thick for a heart beat once the rock lay still, and then a snarl split the air. "Shit!" Alice said again.

oO0Oo

"Girls, get behind me. Now." Skulduggery drew his gun, zeroing in on the noise.

"But-"

"No arguments, Alice! Just get behind me!" Skulduggery commanded, and Alice did as she was told. Emma, on the other hand, was in no mood for a couple of vampires, and eager to put China's teachings to the test. She stepped forwards quickly, avoiding Skulduggery's grasping hand, and opened her book, flicking through the pages as she jogged towards two snarling figures, a man and a woman, both dressed in black. When she found what she needed, she broke into a run, and rolled up both her sleeves. Alice and Skulduggery watched, dumbstruck, as quiet, sensible Emma sprinted flat out towards two things that wanted to kill her, with symbols glowing blue right up to her elbows.

The first vampire, the girl, came at her with bared teeth, snarling ferociously, confident that she could kill her opponent. What she didn't expect was the lashing whip of blue light to cleave her completely in half as Emma whirled and slashed her hand through the air. The two parts of the female vampire fell to the ground with a wet thud, and Emma moved right on to deal with the next one. She tapped her cheek and an intricate web of symbols spread across the left half of her face, glowing a rosy pink. She opened her mouth and screamed, and the male vampire was blasted back off his feet, his skin bubbling as the pure energy behind her cry sizzled his flesh to the bone.

Ten seconds. In ten seconds, Emma had killed two vampires. Alice choked, amazed. Skulduggery tilted his head.

"I thought you were a Teleporter," he said. Emma smiled, the symbols fading.

"I am."

"But you're like China."

"I am."

"Well...I must say I'm impressed."

"Thanks, Dad," Emma grinned, her eyes lighting up.

"You kicked some serious butt, Moo," Al grinned as her sister came to join her. "I never knew China was such a badass, that light scream she taught you was way cool!"

"Oh, she didn't teach me that," Emma grinned. "I learned that one all by myself."

"No way! Really?"

"It's lovely to hear this, and I'm proud of you, Emma, I really am, but we appear to have company," Skulduggery said quietly, and Emma grabbed both their hands and teleported before they could protest, taking her family away from the oncoming group of vampires.

oO0Oo

"Where are we, Moo?" Alice asked, looking around the house. Windows were broken, furniture was tipped over, and books lay scattered about the room, with odd holes in the walls where bricks had been pulled out of the walls during the Reckoning. It was strange, but every room appeared to be a living room, with the exception of a small kitchen at the back that didn't really match the rest of the house, but was still cosy in its own nice way.

"We're at my old house," Skulduggery said, his skull tilting, eyeless gaze on his curly-haired daughter. "Care to explain how you knew where it was, Emma?" She shrugged sheepishly, and he crossed his arms, waiting. She sighed.

"I...might have followed you...just once," she said. When he remained silent, she raised an eyebrow. "I was bored."

"You," Skulduggery said, "are in so much trouble, young lady."

"I'm nineteen. I'm too old to be grounded."

"I'm over four hundred. You're never too old to be grounded. Home."

"But-"

"_Now_, Emma."

"What about Alice?" Emma asked, holding her book tight against her chest.

"Awwh, no way! Are you gonna send me home too?"

"You really want to stay?" Skulduggery asked, pulling his hat a little lower over his eye sockets.

"Yeah!" Al said, and widened her eyes, fixing him with a pleading stare. Skulduggery stood firm for a moment, then tutted at her.

"_That_, is absolutely outrageous. Valkyrie taught you well," he said, his resolve crumbling under the puppy dog stare. Alice could make her cornflower blue eyes very big, and very shiny when she wanted to. The blonde hair and dimples didn't help either.

"So she gets to stay and I don't?" Emma asked, disgruntled.

"Yes."

"That's not fair though."

"You're grounded."

"But-"

"Grounded. Home. Now." Emma opened her mouth to answer again, and then gave up and disappeared with a soft 'pop' as the air rushed to fill the space she'd suddenly vacated. Skulduggery turned to Alice. "Follow me again and you're grounded for twice as long."

"I'm an adult. I'm twenty one, Skul. I'm older than Moo. Are you seriously going to punish me like a kid?"

"As I said to Emma, I am over four hundred years old. To me, you're both children still."

"And what about Val? She's only a few years older than me. Does she count as a kid still?"

"The only reason you're not back with Emma right now is because she calls me Dad. To her, I'm in charge. To you? Not so much. You're young to me, and yes, so is Valkyrie, but you and her are different. And I've been through this before now, when I married her. I have no intentions of going back there."

"Well, alright then," Alice grinned. "So are you going to tell me what you were doing or do I have to guess?"

"I was actually on my way to find an old friend."

"What old friend?" Alice asked, her eyes shining, reminding Skulduggery of the first time he'd met her, as a small, giggling six year old with sparkling eyes and adorable dimples.

"A man named Dexter Vex. I believe you've heard of him?" she heard the humour in his velvet voice.

"I get to meet one of the Dead Men? For real?"

"Well unless we're all figments of your imagination, and this is just one incredibly odd dream, yes, for real." Skulduggery took off his hat and brushed a speck of imaginary lint away from the rim. "Shall we?" he asked, placing it back on his head and turning to go.

"This," Alice beamed, "is going to be fun."


	5. Reunion

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 5...**_

_**This hasn't been updated for ages! D: Thought I'd start it up again seeing as how it seems so popular (': So here you go, disclaimer and stuff still applies, and I hope you enjoy it! :D **_

oO0Oo

Skulduggery knocked on a door three times, and Alice raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Are you kidding me? You're _knocking_? The door isn't even attached to a wall!"

"It still has bricks around it," Skulduggery said haughtily. "Therefore, it still qualifies as a wall. And yes, I'm knocking."

"Why? Nobody's home."

"Because if I don't knock, Vex may decide to jump on my back and pull off my head before he realises that it's me. I'd very much like my head to remain attached to me."

"You just tried to be funny," Alice said quietly, smiling.

"Excuse me?"

"You're being funny again. You're making a joke. You haven't done that in a while."

"Of course I'm making jokes; I have my wife back." She heard the tender smile in his voice, and her heart thumped happily. She'd missed his sense of humour. A ghost of his old self was returning, and she felt honoured to be one of the few who could see it grow.

The door swung open to reveal a handsome blonde man with sparkling eyes and crinkle lines from a well-used smile. Alice's breath caught in her throat; she'd heard stories from Tanith about how attractive Dexter Vex was, but nothing had prepared her for the strong arms, the chiselled jaw, the long legs and that charming, disarming grin.

"Dexter Vex, at your service," he said, bowing low to her and kissing her hand. Skulduggery cleared his throat loudly.

"Charming. Your centuries-old-friend comes to see you after decades, Vex, and you ignore him for a pretty girl." The skeleton feigned offense, and Vex broke into a lightning grin, seizing Skulduggery's hand and pulling him into a tight hug.

"It's been too long, old friend," Dexter said, pushing blonde hair out of his eyes. "And who is your lovely companion?"

"This is Alice, my sister-in-law-come-daughter," Skulduggery told him.

"Alice? As in, the little six-year-old I saw at your wedding? Ye gods, you certainly grew into your potential," Vex said with a wink, and Skulduggery cocked his head, not sure what to make of it. Alice herself raised an eyebrow, keeping it cool.

"And you need to put your eyes back in your head, buddy," she answered. Skulduggery chuckled.

"A woman who respects herself, I like that. A woman who can put a man in his place is an interesting challenge," was the smart retort she received from the blonde man, coupled with a mischievous wink.

"I learned from the best."

"And who might the best be?"

"China Sorrows."

"Ah. I take it you're very good at playing hard-to-get?" he asked.

"As it happens, I'm an expert."

"Fancy a game?" He flashed her a wicked grin.

"This is completely irrelevant to anything we came to discuss with you, Vex," Skulduggery cut in smoothly. "Now I'd appreciate it if you stopped hitting on Alice long enough to come back home with us. Or is that too much trouble?" The tone in the skeleton's voice was fatherly and protective, and Alice felt a dull ache for her real father, Desmond Edgley, a man with a sparkling smile that now only resurfaced in her deepest dreams, time slowly fading the twinkle in his eye. The ache was quickly squashed by the pride and gratefulness she felt at being accepted so completely by Skulduggery, who'd become her brother and father all at once.

oO0Oo

Dexter Vex was childish, charming, and enormous fun, and Alice warmed to him quickly. He managed to tease the old Skulduggery further out of his shell, and the skeleton began to reveal some of his shocking wit and glittering sense of humour. Alice had distant memories of sitting on his lap with a puppy in her arms, listening to him charm her parents into allowing him to marry Valkyrie. They were happy memories, and painful ones. Even after fifteen years, they still stung.

When Dexter set eyes on Valkyrie, her jaw dropped open.

"Dexter?"

"Val! Hello there, beautiful!" He opened his arms for a hug and she squeezed him tight. When he released her, Alice was pleased to see her sidle up to her husband and plant a gentle kiss on his cheek bone. He turned his head quickly, slyly stealing a real kiss from her. She grinned when he released her, her cheeks flushed.

"Who's this?" Emma asked, wandering into the room with her book clutched against her chest. She came to stand beside Alice.

"Moo, this is Dexter Vex. He's an old friend of Skulduggery's."

"Dad has friends?" The curly-haired girl teased, and Vex snorted, before cocking his head.

"Is it me or did this girl just call you Dad?" he asked.

"Of course I called him Dad. I'm Emma Pleasant." She held out a hand in greeting, smiling brightly. Vex shook it graciously, before looking at Skulduggery, questions in his eyes.

"She was orphaned when Darquesse broke free. We took her in and raised her as our own," Valkyrie explained.

"As far as I'm concerned, my family is right here. I'm no orphan, I have parents," Emma grinned.

"And one kick ass auntie," Tanith said, wandering in. She saw Vex and stopped. "I thought you were dead."

"Can't get rid of me that easily," Vex answered. "I'm harder to kill than a cockroach in a nuclear war."

"As fun as this gathering is, will somebody please explain to me why exactly we went to go get Vex?" Alice asked, and Valkyrie raised an eyebrow.

"You're in trouble. And where are you going, Emma? You're in trouble too," she said, as Emma tried to disappear discreetly.

"What for?" they asked together.

"Leaving the grounds when that was exactly what I told you not to do. You're both grounded, so go to your rooms."

"But-"

"_Now_."

Alice groaned and clomped up the stairs, scowling like a child, even though she was the older of the two. Emma just followed behind, already immersed in the pages of her book. It was the book China had given her a few years ago, containing all the symbols in the known magical world, and several symbols that weren't.

"Do you ever stop reading?"

"Do you ever listen to Mum?" Emma retorted.

"Touché."


	6. The Hounds of Hell Are Coming

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 6...**_

_**Sorry it's taking me so long to sort out all these stories I've got going, I do apologise. Anyways, here's the next bit, and I'll try to regulate but no promises. These will all be finished though, I swear! Also, I'd like to say a big thanks to Diana Obelisk for that awesome review; that actually made me laugh my head off! Just what I needed to see to get me back in the swing of things! :)**_

oO0Oo

"It's the same all over the planet. I've been to every country you can think of. You name it, I've seen it. Grimm has some kind of parody of himself in charge in every single territory," Vex was saying. "It's like the magical version of the Holocaust in some places; mages brutally murdered or worked to death, their bodies just lying in the streets." Vex's eyes were distant, haunted almost.

"A parody of himself?" Skulduggery asked, his head tilting.

"Yeah. You remember Anton Shudder?"

"Of course."

"It looks like his gist did, only with Grimm's face. I reckon if we kill Grimm, those things will die too, but if they don't it's gonna be damn hard to get rid of them all. They're strong, almost as strong as Notorious himself. Even you and Val would have a hard time killing them. Also, they're seriously creepy. And smart."

"So he has a part of himself in every part of the globe?" Valkyrie asked.

"Looks like it, yeah."

China cleared her throat, and every head in the room turned towards her. Valkyrie couldn't help rolling her eyes; China Sorrows demanded attention no matter where she was.

"I believe I've heard of these 'gists' you're so crudely describing, Dexter. They are, in fact, not gists at all, but actual pieces of Grimm's soul. He has found a way to split his soul beyond repair, creating multiple copies of himself, since he released Darquesse's power. This will have made him weaker; it takes a lot of strength to maintain so many different versions of oneself. This, my friends, could be just what we need." She smiled.

"You're saying we can beat him?" Tanith asked, leaning forwards and rocking on the balls of her feet restlessly.

"Oh, heaven's no. I'm saying that before it was almost certain that every single one of us would die a very painful, slow, messy death if he ever got his hands on us. Now, it will just be painful and messy. He could still kill all of us quite easily if he felt like it, but I suspect we've been getting on his nerves."

"Well. That just ruined my day," Solomon Wreath muttered.

"There is, however, more of a chance that Valkyrie may be able to harm him again. We've seen from our previous epic battle that he can be wounded, but that he heals extremely quickly. With his soul being split into so many pieces, the healing process will take longer, which opens the opportunity up for wounding him further while he's concentrating on healing."

"You mean like we did with the Grotesquery?" Valkyrie asked, seeing where China was going.

"That's exactly what I mean."

"You want to ambush him," Skulduggery said, guessing China's plan. "You want to find a way into the castle and attack him without giving him an opportunity to fight back."

"Yes I do."

"That means we need help, the element of surprise, and-"

"Plenty of insanity?" Vex put in, cutting the skeleton off.

"Well, I was going to say luck," Skulduggery answered, tilting the brim of his hat back a little, revealing more of his eye sockets.

"That works too," Dexter grinned.

oO0Oo

"_Where is he?" Grimm thundered, slamming a fist down on the arm of his throne, causing the solid black marble to split and crack. The Underlings around him flinched and gibbered madly, cowering away. They were ugly things, built like men with wolfen heads, claws and teeth, furless and a purplish red colour, with acid green eyes and a permanent stoop. They walked on all fours, much like a gorilla might, built up with thin, coiling muscles. Only the higher ranking Underlings could speak. "Don't stand there whimpering, answer me! Where is my son?" he roared. The Underlings could give him no answer; none of them had any idea where Grimm's offspring had gone. _

_Melancholia entered the room, holding one of the missing teenager's jumpers._

"_Melancholia, where is he?"_

"_He's gone, Grimm. He's run away," she said, her red eyes flashing with anger and betrayal._

"_We have to find him. We must keep him away from Pleasant and Cain," Grimm insisted, pushing himself off his throne and pacing, sending a vicious kick into the ribs of any Underling that dared stray too close._

"_You think he'll find them?" she asked, twisting and untwisting the soft material in her hands._

"_Yes. And when he does, they'll kill him."_

"_Then we have to find him," she answered simply. "At all costs." Notorious nodded and turned on his lapdogs, his wings unfurling suddenly._

"_Underlings!" he called. "I have need of you. Raksha, where are you?" The alpha stepped forwards, his ears flattened against his head, spiked tail tucked between his legs. His voice was rough and distorted behind the sharp fangs, struggling to escape half formed vocal chords._

"_What do you need, Master?"_

"_I need an army, Raksha. And I need one now."_

"_As you wish; where will you be sending them?"_

"_The Edgley residence. Call it a surprise party for some old friends." The smile on Grimm's face was enough to curdle milk. Raksha threw back his malformed head and let loose an almighty howl, the noise escalating as his brethren joined him. The battle cries echoed through the halls of the castle, the sound of demons preparing for war._

oO0Oo

"God I'm so _bored_," Alice muttered. "Moo, how can you read the same old book over and over again without getting bored?" Emma raised an eyebrow; Alice hated being cooped up. She didn't like small spaces, and her nerves made her talk more.

"It's called education, Al. I'm learning the symbols so that when it comes to fighting, I don't need the book to save my life. I want to be like China, and be able to have the symbols on my skin, so I can call on them whenever I need them. I'm sick of being a loose end." Emma smiled. "Also, the book's kind of a comfort thing now, I've had it for so long that I'd feel lost without it."

"Nerd," Alice winked. Emma grinned and launched a pillow that Alice caught and threw back. She was about to hurl a faded old teddy when a noise like the screeching of nails on a blackboard pulled her up short. It was coming from outside. They shot each other a glance, before Emma moved to push the window open.

The sound wasn't nails on blackboards, or tearing metal or anything like that. It was much more terrifying. It sounded like the baying of a thousand bloodthirsty wolves, splitting the air with head throbbing _noise_. It poked at their ear drums like toothpicks, scratching away inside the corridors of their minds.

"What is it?" Emma asked, listening as the colour left her face, looking like she may be sick.

"Get the others, Moo. The hounds are coming."


	7. Kidnap

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 7...**_

_**Oh wow! It's been such a long time since I've been on here! Definitely time to start something new, hope you guys have missed me! If not then I hope you rediscover my stories because I intend to finish the ones I have left before starting any more! Just to let you all know, while I've been away, I've been in contact with publishers AND I've got myself a job! Anywaaaaayyyyy...here's the next chapter, sorry to keep you all waiting!**_

oO0Oo

Skulduggery burst into the room, flinging the door back into the wall.

"You need to go upstairs. You need to go upstairs and lock yourselves in the attic," he said. Emma got to her feet to obey, but Alice folded her arms indignantly.

"No way! I want to help!" she protested. "Skul please let me help."

"_Now_, Alice!" Skulduggery was in no mood for her disobedience. When there was steel in his voice, Alice knew she was expected to obey, so she did. She ran into the hall, heading for the hatch into the attic, but not before she heard Skulduggery speak to Emma.

"Not you, I need your help."

"Okay dad," was Emma's grave reply.

Anger and jealousy boiled inside Alice; she broke into a sprint, but not towards the attic. Her destination was the back door. She was determined to help if it killed her.

oO0Oo

The noise was unbearable; China, Valkyrie, Skulduggery, Solomon, Ghastly, Tanith and Vex, along with their newest addition, Emma, stood ready to fight, in a line in front of Gordon's home, facing the oncoming ranks of hellish dogs. Screaming and barking, they formed a gaggle of flexing muscles and flashing teeth, unable to break down China's wards.

"Right, time for one of my exceptionally inspirational speeches to cheer us all up!" Skulduggery said brightly. He stepped forwards and paced the length of the line, hands behind his back, like an army General formally addressing his troops. Raising his voice above the baying of the hounds, he gave what was quite possibly the most awful speech Valkyrie had ever heard.

"We are faced with a band of the ugliest dogs I've ever seen. Dogs with claws, and muscles, and yellow eyes...and large teeth. ...In fact I daresay they're probably a lot stronger than us, and meaner too. And there's more of them. Which, thinking about it, doesn't really bode too well for us. In fact I'm fairly certain we're all about to suffer serious and horrible injuries, but that's not the point. The point is, my fellow mages, that we do not die! That is and always will be something we must not do! So the aim of this fight is to not die. I think we can all agree that dying would be a very bad idea. Are you with me?" He looked at each of them, waiting for an answer.

"Is that it?" Vex asked, raising a disbelieving eyebrow.

"If your speech reflects anything of our chances of survival," Solomon said, "then we are all doomed."

"It wasn't that bad, was it?" Skulduggery asked Valkyrie.

"Of course not."

"Really?" the skeleton asked hopefully.

"God, no. It was terrible."

No more was said; the wards collapsed with the deafening sound of shattering glass, fractured glimmers of multicoloured light scattering across the ground as their defences fell. The purple beasts surged forwards, fangs bared, howling at the top of their lungs, stooped and ugly.

China pushed her palms together flat and formed a solid wall of light between the mages and their assailants. As the first wave of Underlings struck the barrier, she staggered, but her palms remained flattened against one another, the symbols in her skin burning bright yellow. The second wave struck and China fell to her knees, just as Skulduggery rose from the ground, manipulating the air around him to offer him flight. He skirted the heads of the Underlings, lashing out kicks here and there, floating gracefully out of reach of their snagging claws and dripping teeth. He set two of the beasts alight, moving on to a third without missing a beat. Valkyrie summoned the blackness humming inside her gauntlet, sending a whip of shadows around China's faltering barrier, slicing several of the purple monstrosities in half. Their blood was blue and thick, coating the grass in sapphire-coloured goo.

Emma flicked through her book, her lips speaking words she knew by heart before she even found the page she needed. She knelt beside China and pressed her palms together, her lips moving at a furious speed, and the barrier blazed with yellow light, thickening and growing lashing tendrils that destroyed anything that drew too close in a swarm of flames and ash.

Ghastly and Vex leapt into the fight with their fists and feet, back to back amidst a swarm of Underlings, their boxing techniques alone proving a match enough for the muscular beasts. Ghastly delivered a right hook, followed by a left cross and a rib shot, felling two of them with deft, swift blows. Tanith yelled his name and shot him a grin, ordering him to duck as a meaty fist swung for his head. He responded by breaking the legs of the dog that attacked him.

Tanith parried her blade, her sword singing through the air, before she leapt and latched on to Skulduggery's foot above her. She used him to swing herself over the sea of demons, landing on their heads and leaping around, light as a feather, her blade shattering sunbeams as it flicked back and forth, splattering her with blue blood and claiming life after twisted life.

Solomon and Valkyrie sent wave after wave of blackness billowing out, Valkyrie using her unique power to sizzle flesh from the bones of the Underlings. For the first time in a long time, a coldness she had thought she'd never feel again was building up inside of her. It was building and coalescing in her right hand. She rose into the air, shadows pulsing out around her as she took off. She stayed in the air a moment before beginning her descent, judging the best place to cause the most damage. She was relying on that cold energy to heal her again as she hurled herself at the ground, spinning as she dropped head first. She flung out her arms, and shadows shot from them like blades. Everywhere the shadows touched, Underlings exploded in chunks of flesh and blue blood. She took out more than a hundred of them, and left Vex, Tanith and Ghastly splattered in blue slime and body parts, flat on their backs. Skulduggery rose too high to be touched by the mess, Solomon shadow walked a safe distance away, and China and Emma were protected by the barrier of light with its swinging clubs that took down Underling after Underling. Valkyrie herself was at the bottom of a huge pit, her body broken and bent.

Skulduggery dropped to the ground and ran to her, somehow managing to keep his suit clean. He didn't slip on the gore, didn't splash it on his shoes, or trip over bodies. He skidded to the bottom of the crater and gently lifted his wife, surprisingly strong despite being only a skeleton. He rose to the edge of the pit and landed gently on his feet. Valkyrie stirred, hissing in pain as her broken bones fixed themselves. A calming numbness was spreading through her body like ice through her veins. It was her power, that energy fixing her body even as she discovered each new injury. It was wonderful, feeling the freezing buzz. In less than two minutes, she felt fully able to walk.

Skulduggery set her down on her feet, head tilting. In the fighting he'd lost his hat; pieces of it lay here and there, smeared with demon blood. Valkyrie looked up at his big, empty eye sockets. He sensed what she wanted and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close, the other hand reaching to tilt her chin as he gently pressed his teeth to her lips. She kissed him, hoping he could feel all the lost and wasted feelings she'd built up over the years.

"Ew," Tanith groaned. "It's in my _hair_." She noticed them embracing, not far from her, and smiled wickedly.

Valkyrie froze as a thick glob of demon slop hit the back of her head, dripping down her neck and soaking into her hair. Skulduggery, still clean, put his hands up to show he had nothing to do with it. To her disgust, the blood was warm. She shuddered, fighting the urge to throw up, and turned to retaliate, but her plans of throwing a severed arm at Tanith's goo-splattered head were cut short when she looked just beyond the boundary where the wards once stood.

Alice screamed as the Underling carried her away. She was going to die.


	8. Art

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 8...**_

_**Another chapter because I've neglected you lovelies for so long! So here you go guys, I hope you like it! Casually hoping I've kept up to the standards I started with...R&R is appreciated! **_

oO0Oo

Alice hadn't planned to be kidnapped. She hadn't planned to have demon claws cutting her skin as it dragged her swiftly away from all that she loved. Her shoulder throbbed from the strain as she was hauled along, the Underling jabbering madly, excited at securing its kill.

No. No, she wasn't its kill. She was Alice Pleasant, and she wasn't going down that easily. She twisted and kicked and struggled as hard as she could, unable to break its grip as it lumbered through piles of rubble and burnt out vehicles, staggering through the remains of what was once a beautiful street, lined with matching houses. It marked the outskirts of what had once been Haggard. It was a wasteland, the streetlamps and road signs gone, buildings and businesses collapsed in on themselves, scorch marks still visible on the remaining brick work from the day Valkyrie's insane energy destroyed everything.

Alice shot out a hand, retrieving a shard of glass from the ground as she skidded past. She ignored the cuts it made in the soft flesh of her palm, though her blood made it slippery and difficult to hold onto. She took a breath and twisted, stabbing the glass deep into the flesh of the Underling's wrist. It screamed as the sharp tip of the shard pierced right through and out the other side of its wrist, and dropped her. She hit the ground roughly, scraping her shoulder and back, but she was on her feet in a second, sprinting away from the jabbering beast as fast as her bleeding legs could carry her.

It howled and gave chase, and as she listened to its feet pounding heavily against the ground, she realised her efforts were futile. She was hopelessly outmatched in speed and strength, and she'd left her Katana back at the house, on the floor where she'd dropped it after slicing open an Underling.

She carried on running anyway, desperate to prolong her life even if only by a few minutes. Her only hope was to find a place to hide and pray that the ugly brute was dumb enough to run past. She ran and ducked and dodged round lumps of concrete, ignoring twisted benches that once sat on the paths, wary of the darkened, gaping holes that once were shop windows and businesses.

An arm shot out of one of the windows and snagged her waist, surprisingly strong, dragging her into the darkness, silencing her screams and cutting off her air supply with the other hand.

oO0Oo

"What was she doing outside? I told you to send her to the attic!" Valkyrie yelled at Skulduggery. He flinched away from the accusations in her voice.

"I sent her to the attic," he answered quietly.

"You _sent_ her? You mean you didn't go with her and lock her in yourself? You _know_ what she's like, Skulduggery! What in the _Hell_ made you think she'd actually go there and stay out of her own free will?"

"I...don't know." He made no attempts to defend himself; the guilt was crushing him as it was.

"Mum, stop it!" Emma cut in. "It's not dad's fault Alice got kidnapped. She must have heard me agree to stay with him and fight. This is _Alice_, she'll have been upset that she wasn't included. She'll have snuck out to try and prove that she could help," Emma said.

"Whatever the reason she was outside," said China, "is clearly irrelevant now. What is important at the moment is to find her and get her back here, and grounded, as soon as possible."

"I will find her, Valkyrie. I will find her and I will bring her back home safe. I promise," Skulduggery said. When she didn't answer, he lifted her chin, forcing her gently but firmly to look right at him. "I promise," he repeated, so softly that only she could hear him. Once more, he tilted his skull to kiss her briefly, and then he left her.

oO0Oo

The Underling skittered past, angrily flailing its injured hand around, confused as to where she could have disappeared to. The arms pulled her back into the shadows as the demon passed its yellow gaze over the shattered store front Alice had been dragged through. She held her breath, her heart pounding in her ears; she was sure the demon could hear it.

But it lumbered onwards, unaware of her presence, cheated of its next meal. Alice and the person who'd saved her didn't move until a few minutes after the Underling had disappeared out of both sight and earshot.

She finally turned, expecting Emma, or perhaps even Tanith or Valkyrie, but the sight that met her was neither of them. Instead she was faced with the sight of a young man, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, with astonishingly bright green eyes. Black hair fell over his forehead like a shadowy waterfall, straight and soft. His skin was pale, almost as pale as the bones of Skulduggery's skull, and his baggy shirt hid well formed muscle.

"Why are you out here alone? There are vampires and Underlings all over the place," he said, and his voice held the same velvet quality Skulduggery always possessed, smooth as warm honey.

"I got separated from my family," she answered.

"How?"

"The Underlings attacked our house, I was fighting them when one dragged me off. I stabbed it with glass to try and get away." She held out her hands to show him her palms.

"It looks like you've been having a thumb war with a cheese grater," the boy said soberly. "I'm Art, by the way."

"Alice, and thanks for saving my life."

"Don't mention it. You said you were with more people, do you know your way back home? I'm alone, and it's not safe to be alone on these streets. Loners end up dead. I can keep you alive, get you back home either way. I don't expect anything in return."

"If you can get me home, you can stay with us as long as you like, kid." She squinted. "How old are you." He blinked, but answered immediately.

"Nineteen. Any reason why that's important?"

"You remind me of someone a lot older than you. And with a lot less skin."

"Pardon?" She shook her head, smiling.

"Come on, I need to get home. The sooner the better."


	9. Intruder

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 9...**_

_**Hey guys. I'm not sure how the format of this chapter will go, new laptop, new program so it might screw up. Hopefully it'll be okay though! Anyways I've missed this very muchly! :') Trying to bring back a bit of the old Val/Skul humour over the next few chapters, make it a bit lighter now everybody's safe :) Also I'm trying to add more description, thanks for the R&R, it's much appreciated! Boiz, I'm back in my groove :P**_

oO0Oo

Skulduggery's first reaction when he saw Alice was to hug her, which he did. His second reaction was ground her, which he also did.

"Alice, you are grounded, until you die."

"It's not like I got kidnapped on purpose Skulduggery."

"While that may be true, you were still outside when you were meant to be in the attic. Had you not been outside, you wouldn't have been..." Skulduggery stopped, his head tilting to the left a little. "Alice, who is that?"

"Skulduggery, this is Art. Art, meet Skul, my brother-in-law. Art saved my life."

"While I thank you for saving my wife's sister, Art, I also feel the need to point out that she wasn't meant to be outside in the first place. In fact, like I said earlier, if you hadn't been outside, we wouldn't be here now, out in the open, with vampires and Underlings and God only knows what else wandering around out here. I'd be at home, with Valkyrie, probably trying on a particularly dashing new suit, or polishing my gun."

"Skulduggery, that was possibly the worst 'thank you' I've ever heard anyone give. You're a rude man."

"I'm not inclined to care at the moment, I'm busy daydreaming about the new suit I'll never wear."

"Where's your hat?" Alice asked suddenly, grasping for something, _anything_, to change the subject. Art watched the exchange in silence, not quite sure what to make of it. They were an odd pair, extremely odd, and he couldn't understand how the skeleton knew where to look when it had no eyes.

"Gone. The demons ate it. I loved that hat, it was the one Valkyrie took hostage the day she attached herself to me, now those fond, annoying memories of her twelve-year-old hero worship are gone. Also it matched my favourite tie," Skulduggery said forlornly, then drew his gun. "Continue to stare at me, random boy, and I'll be forced to shoot you." Art blinked and backed away from the barrel aimed at his forehead, blushing; he hadn't realised he'd been staring. Skulduggery hid his amusement well, but Alice saw it in the set of his shoulders, and she scowled at his rotten joke.

Art didn't see it as a joke, he saw at as the barrel of a loaded gun pointing at his face. He looked away quickly, out to Haggard pier, where the sea crashed against the splintered wood, the colour of cobalt, and angry as a cornered lion. Spray exploded upwards like a watery volcano, pattering down on the ruined buildings and twisted corpses of old cars rusting away in the streets. The tide barriers had collapsed during the Reckoning, leaving the sea to claim the entirity of Haggard beach and crash upwards onto the streets and roads behind.

"You're in a bad mood today," Alice was saying with a sigh when Art decided it was safe to listen to the conversation again.

"I'd be in a much better mood if I wasn't chasing you all over Haggard. It doesn't help that I finally manage to get Valkyrie back after fifteen years, and she ends up shouting at me because you don't do as asked." His tone was laced with a subtle annoyance. To anyone who didn't know him, Skulduggery's tone would seem light and amicable, but Alice knew she was in trouble. Big trouble. In fact, if he ever let her pick up a Katana again, it'd be a miracle. She decided to change tactics, brushing a subject she knew would be equally as touchy with Skulduggery in such a black mood.

"Skuuuul..."

"Whatever you are about to ask, the answer is no."

"But you haven't-"

"No."

"You didn't even let me-"

"_No_."

"Skulduggery! Will you please listen?"

"I will listen to you as much as you listened to me when I told you to stay inside, which, incidentally, was not at all."

"Can Art stay at the house with us?" she blurted before Skulduggery could make another smart reply.

"No."

"Why not?"

"He's a complete stranger, Alice. We don't know where he's from, what he can do, or why he bothered to save you. We have no reason to trust him, other than he corrected your mistake."

"But he's on his own. He'll be killed if we leave him out here for the night, and I do owe him for saving me."

"Then you can settle your debt with him yourself. The answer is still no."

"Pleeeaaaaaseee?" she begged, making her brown eyes large and sparkly. They were so like Valkyrie's that for a moment it caught Skulduggery off guard. His resolve weakened, temper fading from a furnace to a candle flame. Impossibly, she made her eyes even wider, so innocent that he couldn't bear to look at her.

"Oh for pity's sake! Fine." Alice's answering grin was smug as Skulduggery dug out his phone, tucking his gun back into his jacket. It was picked up after two rings.

"Yello?" said a familiar voice at the other end, faded and crackling.

"Fletcher, where are you?"

"Canada with Erskine, it's a Hell hole over here. Why?"

"Alice got kidnapped. I've found her, she's safe now, and she's with the person that saved her. We need to get back to Gordon's house, but it's getting dark and the streets are teeming with vampires and Underlings. I'm willing to bet that a second kidnapping probably wouldn't be a good thing to run into."

"Sometimes I swear you only keep me around for the taxi service and my rugged good looks," Fletcher muttered.

"I keep you around because, as annoying as you are, you're useful."

"Where are you?" Fletcher muttered.

"We're nearby whatever remains of Haggard pier." The phone disconnected as the signal struggled to compensate for Fletcher's sudden change in location. He stepped out of the air beside Skulduggery with a gentle 'pop', and the skeleton put the phone back in his pocket.

"Erskine's gonna be really annoyed when he figures out that I'm not there to get him out of any sticky situations." Skulduggery chose not to answer.

Fletcher had grown out of the lanky teenage stage a while ago; he was an adult, and an attractive one at that, Alice thought dryly. The childish roundness in his jaw was gone, his once wild blonde hair shorter and soft, the fringe stuck up at the front. The wiry muscles of his arms and chest had broadened and thickened, making him stocky rather than skinny. The only thing that hadn't changed was how cute he was. And the fact that he was still a jerk. But he was a hot jerk.

"Hi Fletch," Alice said.

"Hey gorgeous," he winked. She rolled her eyes and held out a hand, fighting a smile. He took it and waited for Skulduggery to link up. The skeleton placed a gloved hand on Fletcher's shoulder, and the other on Art's, before they disappeared, the air rushing in to fill the space they vacated.

oO0Oo

Valkyrie was pacing the floor of the living room when they appeared, a worried frown creasing her smooth face. Fletcher snorted, and she stopped abruptly, her head flicking up to look at them.

"Don't stop your pacing on our account, the trail you're wearing into the floor isn't quite finished yet," he said, but she didn't seem to hear him; she launched herself at Alice, folding her into a tight hug. Alice jerked in surprise, but soon wrapped her arms around her sister.

"I'm sorry, Val. I should've listened to Skulduggery." Alice stepped back and looked at the skeleton, who appeared to be looking at the ground. Guilt bit down on her as she watched; he was upset because Valkyrie had blamed him for her being kidnapped. He'd been upset so much, for such a long time, and she just kept making it worse. Well now it was time to at least _try_ to fix things. "He found me. He found _us_," she corrected herself, gesturing to Art, who nodded awkwardly.

"Us?" Valkyrie looked at Art for a minute, before sticking out a hand. "I'm Valkyrie Pleasant," she said.

"I'm Art?"

"And that's short for...?"

"Artemis."

"Artemis what?" she asked warily, unease prickling through her. The silver gauntlet encasing her fingers thrummed with cold energy.

"Artemis Grimm." Once again, Art found himself staring down the barrel of Skulduggery's hand gun.


	10. Old Flame

_**From Ashes We Rise: Chapter 10...**_

_**Okay so here's the next chapter, what will Skulduggery do with Art? Will he shoot him? Won't he? Nobody knows ;) Read on! :') Hope you're all enjoying it, it'd be a waste of time if you weren't! **_

oO0Oo

Artemis backed away quickly, hands up to ward off any bullets that might come flying his way. He expected to be killed, to be savagely beaten and questioned, to be forced into giving information, or asked questions that he couldn't answer, so he was surprised when a girl with curly brown hair jumped off the sofa, dropping a heavy book on the cushion she'd vacated, and stood right in front of him. Skulduggery dropped his gun immediately, unable to even so much as _point_ the weapon in her direction.

"Dad, wait!" she said quickly. "He saved Alice, if he was dangerous or he wanted to harm us, he'd have killed her himself, or saved himself the trouble and let the Underling finish her off. Don't kill him."

"Emma, he's Grimm's son. He is the son of the man that drove humans extinct and severely dented the magical population. He is the blood of a monster responsible for billions of deaths, and yet more slavery and pain," Skulduggery told her, his fingers tightening on his gun. He wanted to shoot the boy where he stood, but he couldn't, not while his daughter was in the way.

"And you were Lord Vile, dad. You were responsible for your own fair share of deaths way back when. Mum was and still is Darquesse, the one that harboured that power in the first place. You can't justify killing him for his blood line when your own pasts are black as tar," she said, not angrily, but calmly. "Think about it; he came willingly, no doubt knowing exactly who you were and what you were capable of. If he meant us harm, we'd have known right away."

"Please, let me explain," Art said, daring to move out from behind Emma. The second she was out of the way, Skulduggery raised the gun, aiming it at the boy's left eye. At point blank range, he couldn't miss. Losing Art would be a devastating blow to Grimm...and yet he couldn't squeeze the trigger. He held his ground for a moment, before lowering the weapon slowly.

"...Explain."

"I am not my father. I just want to get that straight before I go any further. My father is a vengeful, murdering, evil monster. I'd rather be like my mother." Art said. Valkyrie frowned.

"Who'd want to be like Melancholia?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

"That witch? She's not my mother. My mother died in the Reckoning. I was five when it happened, and when it was over, Grimm found me and claimed me. He wanted to raise me to be like him, told Melancholia was my new mum. I've hated it." He folded his arms across his chest self consciously, wary of exposing his heart while Skulduggery was holding a loaded gun. "So...I came to find the people I knew could stop him, in the hope that they'd kill him where he stood. What I didn't bank on was one of them turning up on a silver platter. I had no idea Alice was with you all, she just needed help."

"So you're not here to kill everyone or hand us over to your dad or anything?" Alice asked. Everyone else in the room was silent.

"No. But I can warn you now."

"About what?" China asked from her perch on the sofa, where she was gazing at Artemis with keen interest. He swallowed at the sight of her pale blue eyes, and shook his head like he was trying to clear a fog from his mind.

"Stop that, China," Skulduggery said. "Now." China shrugged and released Art, who swayed unsteadily, but focussed and struggled to remember what he was saying.

"That army of Underlings took down your wards, didn't it?" he asked, finally catching hold of the last threads of his thoughts.

"It did; we didn't think they could do it, but they figured out where I'd buried the stones with the right runes carved onto them. I'd buried them rather deep too, which is quite annoying. I ruined my favourite jumper the day I made those wards," China answered in a silky voice. There was a pleasant smile on her face, but a calculating distance in her eyes like cut glass frightened Art more than her lovely face enchanted him.

"The wards masked you from Grimm's sight. He didn't come after you because he didn't know where you were. Now, he knows." There was a tremor to his tone, and Emma felt for him. He was terrified, in a house full of strangers who were deciding right then whether or not they should cut his throat.

"If you ran away, how exactly do you know that?" Tanith asked; she'd been sat in the corner of the room, sharpening her sword, which looked new. Alice scowled when she realised it was her Katana, and not Tanith's sword at all.

"When the wards fell, the act of shattering the bubble of protective magic produced light like a beacon, I could see it from the other side of Haggard," Art answered.

"Then how did the Underlings know where we were?" It was Ghastly's turn to shoot a question at the newcomer.

"So if Grimm didn't know where we were while the wards were up, how did the Underlings know where to go?"

"This was where Grimm sent them. He didn't know you were here, it was pot luck. Unfortunately for you, he was right, and now the wards are down and he knows you're here, he'll want to get rid of you as soon as possible. Valkyrie there is the only threat to him left on the planet. Coupled with Lord Vile, you pose a serious risk to him."

"I'm going to bed," Valkyrie said abruptly.

"You okay?" Skulduggery asked, his big eye sockets on her. She nodded, ignoring the conversation continuing around them.

"Headache. I hurt from the fight as well, I can't heal as well as I could before the Reckoning."

"Personally, I think we should all go to bed. Or at least you all should so I can get to work replacing the wards. The only person that needs to know where I put them is me," China said, standing up. Tanith scowled, but got up and tugged Ghastly away, heading for her room. Valkyrie raised an eyebrow at her friend, and the blonde woman winked back. Val stifled a grin.

oO0Oo

Skulduggery put his head round the door to find Valkyrie laid in the dark, staring up at the ceiling. She looked over at him, sitting up. For a long moment, neither of them said anything, and then Valkyrie scooted over to make room for him. Skulduggery shut the door and removed his tie and shoes, unfastening his top button, and slid onto the bed beside his wife. She sighed and leaned against him. He wrapped a bony arm around her, resting his cheek bone gently against the top of her head, and sat back. She shifted to settle herself more comfortably into his side, and then she spoke.

"What do you think about Art then?"

"I'm not sure. What he says seems truthful, but he's Grimm's son. We can't forget that. He hasn't harmed anyone, so I'd say it should be safe enough for us to let him stay, but trusting him, I think, would be a very silly thing to do."

"Obviously." She looked at him, turning her head, determined to forget everything that happened that day. She wanted a normal conversation with Skulduggery, the kind of conversation they used to have. "You look funny without your hat," she said. Skulduggery swivelled his head toward her, and just looked at her.

"You and your sister have both commented on the absence of my hat."

"Did she say you look funny?"

"She said she wasn't used to my hat not being there."

"She said you look funny didn't she." The skeleton said nothing. "Well, did she?"

"...Yes."

"I've taught her well," Valkyrie grinned proudly. "Right from being a baby I knew she was going to be like me."

"And what exactly does being like you entail, apart from a penchant for raising Caine?"

"Using big words doesn't make you smart you know, it just makes you sound old. And she's cool, like me."

"Yes. Yes, you are definitely cool," Skulduggery said doubtfully. She whacked him with a pillow. "And what about that sentence was a big word?"

"Penchant," Valkyrie said, mimicking his voice. "It makes you sound really, really old."

"In case you've forgotten, I _am_ old. And if penchant is a big word in your dictionary, I dread to think what your English grades were like at school."

"I'm married to an old man, gross," she retaliated, skirting away from her grades.

"And I'm married to a squalling child. Wonderful."

"There you go again with the weird words."

"What, _squalling_? Forgive me for being rude but you honestly have the most limited vocabulary I've ever come across. It's very amusing."

"I'm an amusing person."

"No, _I'm_ an amusing person. You're just mildly funny," Skulduggery said. "Like a puppy that keeps falling over. It's endearing in a funny, clumsy way."

"So now you're calling me a dog?"

"I never said you _were_ a dog, I said you were _like_ a dog-"

"Same thing."

"No it's not-"

"Woof."

"Oh, shut up, Valkyrie," he said, and tilted her chin up so he could press his teeth to her lips. It was innocent enough to start with, until Valkyrie shifted to sit over him, her knees at either sides of his hips. His hands rested lightly on her waist as she continued to kiss him, tightening as he gently nipped the skin of her neck with his teeth. She gasped, and that was it. She was like putty in his hands, and boy, did Skulduggery have experienced hands...


	11. Facade

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 11...**_

_**Hey guys! Is anybody actually still reading this? Or should I just junk it?! Please give R&R, I know I'm begging it a bit but I need to know I'm not writing a crappy story that nobody's reading, because it'll just end up as a dead Fic clogging up my story list :/ So, to junk or not to junk? Anyway, here's the next chapter...**_

oO0Oo

Valkyrie woke up feeling like she'd been hit by a bus. She ached everywhere. Skulduggery swivelled his head to look at her, empty eye sockets trained on her face. She knew what he was going to say before he even said it, and a hot flush spread across her cheeks.

"You were eager last night," he said, and her blush deepened. He sounded very pleased with himself.

"Maybe too eager, I think I have bruises."

"I'm not the softest person you could ever sleep with..."

"Well I wasn't exactly thinking about that last night," she muttered.

"Clearly not."

"Don't sound so smug, it's off-putting."

"It wasn't off-putting last night."

"You were being smug last night too?"

"Hmm, you seemed to enjoy it quite a lot, actually." Valkyrie could hear the smile laced through the velvet voice in her ear, and it sent a shiver skittering down her back. What was even more maddening was him tracing the contours of her hip with one teasing finger. She squirmed uncomfortably, heat blossoming beneath his fingertips where he traced patterns on her side. She was determined not to give in.

His gentle touches against her skin were too much; she had to get out of the bed or he'd end up with yet another reason to be smug. She went to kick off the covers, but his arm snagged her waist, and before she could register what was happening, she was pinned beneath him, his bony fingers capturing her wrists like manacles.

"You're unbelievable," she scowled, but she was breathless, desperate for him. She fought the urge to crane her neck and kiss him, gritting her teeth against her warring desires. She didn't need to fight for long; he bent his head and kissed her instead, so gently, so slowly that her insides turned to jelly. The strength she'd poured into resisting him waned, seeping away like liquid, leaving her feeling languid and weak. She gave in, lacing her fingers through his, gasping as his teeth nipped at her throat. He chuckled, a low, rough sound that set her nerves on fire.

When the adrenalin coursed through her veins like a sparkling river down a mountain side, Skulduggery's aura, the bubble that animated his skeleton, flared bright and prismatic, sticking close to his bones like a thin, rainbow-hued skin. It was always there, glimmering faintly beneath the sleeves of his suit or the brim of his hat, but when Valkyrie's awareness of him was so heightened, as it was now, Skulduggery's life shone like the north star.

A spark ignited inside of her, a fierce, protective longing, and a sliver of strength returned to her, enough to make him sit up. She slid herself onto his lap, no longer kissing him, just looking at him, at the man she'd married. A throbbing ache shot through her; she'd missed him for so long. In her rage, she'd neglected not only him, but her own heart too.

He looked right back at her in silence, the bubble of light around him turning a multitude of blues and purples. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was, how she'd missed him more than anything. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, and how she'd thrown away so much precious time with him. She opened her mouth to speak.

"Skulduggery, I...I'm..." The words wouldn't come; they seemed to lodge themselves in her throat, refusing to let themselves be spoken.

"I know, Valkyrie. It's alright," the skeleton said softly. "I've missed you too." Hot tears stung her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. He wiped them away with gentle hands and pulled her close. She ran her fingers over the soft pulsating lights encasing his spine and felt him shiver. Though he had no lungs with which to breathe, his sharp intake of breath made Valkyrie smile softly as she traced a pattern over his ribs. Where her fingers traced, they left brilliant orange trails in his aura, outlined by deep violet. The effect reminded Valkyrie of the heat signatures picked up by a thermal image camera.

"I still can't quite believe I can feel this, you know," Skulduggery said wondrously, his voice rough as Valkyrie's fingers stroked the rainbows at his throat. "I thought that once Serpine burned away my skin, this kind of love would be impossible for me. And then when we were married, it became real, until the Reckoning. I thought perhaps it had become impossible again, when you disappeared into yourself," he continued. She looked down, her eyes on his ribs, until he tilted her chin up, commandeering her gaze. "But here you are again." He sounded strange; his voice was thick with emotion, almost like he was choking on unshed tears. Of course, Skulduggery could never cry. "Here you are, stirring feelings in me that I never imagined I could have. I thought that part of my heart, figuratively speaking, was broken." Her eyes fell on the symbols still etched into his collar bones; he hadn't used the façade in years, not since he and China had settled on using his old face as the permanent choice for a disguise. She reached out and touched them gently.

Skulduggery blinked, surprised. He had such bottomless, beautiful green eyes, framed by lashes any girl would die for, and high, strong cheekbones. He was young, his skin smooth, slightly waxy but so much better than the first time he'd used the façade. China had since altered it, improved it, created a full-body façade. It felt strange to be sat on Skulduggery's lap while he had flesh; she'd never done it before. In fact, she'd only ever seen him wear his old face once, for a fleeting moment while she was on her way out to spy on Grimm years ago.

"Smile for me, Skulduggery," she said softly as she tilted her head to kiss him, and he did. His lips curved upwards against hers. It felt odd to be held by strong arms, to feel his chest rise and fall, even to feel the tip of his tongue tracing her bottom lip. She pulled back, her brown eyes on his green ones. "Does it feel strange to look at me through your old eyes, Skul?" she asked. He considered for a moment, before shaking his head.

"No. The façade isn't permanent. It can only last for a few hours at a time. That takes away some of the strangeness; I know soon enough I'll lose all this again. It would only feel strange if I felt you loved the façade more than me."

"I don't love the façade more than you, and I never will," she said firmly. Her fingers touched the hard muscles of his abdomen and she looked down, raising her eyebrows in surprise. "Did you have a six pack before Serpine killed you, or is this just China's handy work?"

"Believe it or not, this is exactly what I looked like before I died."

"Damn, you were hot."

"You sound surprised."

"I am."

"Why?"

"Well you just seem so..." she searched for the right word, grinning when she found it. "Geeky," she finished. He blinked.

"Geeky? I prefer 'sophisticated' or 'debonair' much better," he said. Her smile widened.

"Shut up and kiss me."


	12. Innocent? Not Any More

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 1... **_

_**Okie doke, next chapter! Decided not to junk it after all, since people seem to like it! Who's excited? The new Skulduggery Pleasant book has come out in the UK! I AM :D R&R as usual, enjoy guys.** _

oO0Oo

Skulduggery was laid on his side, the façade still activated, his green eyes soft and apologetic. Valkyrie smiled and inched forward to kiss him, moving carefully so she didn't pull anything, and his arms went around her. He was so _warm_.

"I'm sorry," he said for the hundredth time. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Will you stop apologising? It was my first time, it was bound to hurt." She wrinkled her nose. "Another five years and I'd have been a forty-year-old virgin. Ew." Skulduggery laughed out loud, his fingers stroking Valkyrie's soft, dark hair gently.

"You do say some odd things, Valkyrie. I must say I've missed it. I've missed _you_."

"How can you still love me after the way I've treated you?"

"Valkyrie, I waited nearly four hundred years to find you. I don't know how _not_ to love you." He sighed and turned onto his back, and Valkyrie settled her head on his chest, amazed to hear a beating heart beneath the smooth skin. The façade, she had to admit, worked perfectly, every detail was brilliant. But it wasn't what she wanted to see. Gently, she tapped the two symbols at his collar, and the façade receded, revealing smooth white bone and big, hollow eye sockets. She smiled, the tension in her chest releasing like a broken rubber band. He tilted his head and she knew he was smiling. She sighed.

"Now I know you were normally the one to say this but we-"

"Don't. Don't say we have to get up. We have nowhere important to be, therefore I refuse to move. And I refuse to let you move either."

"Hmm, well can I at least go get some breakfast? I'm starving. I could use a coffee too." Skulduggery looked at her for a long moment, before speaking in a reproachful voice.

"You have fifteen minutes before I come find you and drag you back here."

"I love you too," she said cheerfully, planting a kiss on the top of his skull as she slipped out of bed to reach her dressing gown. She could feel Skulduggery's gaze on her back like fingers trailing across her bare skin, and she almost considered skipping breakfast altogether, until her stomach growled indignantly. She sighed and slipped on the thin robe, leaving the room without looking back.

oO0Oo

She padded down the stairs barefoot, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, and stopped when she saw a figure sitting in the living room alone. This figure had raven black hair and eyes so bright green they glowed like lanterns in the shadowy living room. All the curtains were drawn to block out the brightening daylight, but Valkyrie could still see the boy sat up on the sofa, sleep still clinging to him. His clothes were rumpled, his hair a fluffy mess, and his chest rose and fell rapidly, like he'd woken from a terrifying nightmare that hadn't quite left him yet.

"Artemis Grimm," she said softly, and his head rose a fraction, though he didn't meet her gaze. He was thin and slight, with large, lamp-like eyes and long black lashes, not at all how Valkyrie expected Notorious Grimm's son to look. He looked like an Ifrit, with his smooth skin and slender limbs, whereas his father was all muscle and evil, a Faceless One in human skin.

"It's just Art," the boy said. "I am not Grimm's son, not any more." He smiled sadly to himself. "To be hated by all, to be loved by none. What worth has life if none wish to share it with me? For I am the son of the Devil," he murmured, speaking to himself with a faraway look in his eyes.

"What was that?" Valkyrie asked him.

"Just something I read somewhere once," he told her, his smile brightening ever so slightly. He looked at her, finally, and she refrained from gasping. His pupils were vertical black slits sets in big, brilliant green spheres, like a cat's eyes. That explained why they glowed when the room was so dark. Those eyes were beautiful and disconcerting. "Mrs Pleasant," he said softly. "I didn't come here to spy. I didn't come here to kill anyone. I came here simply because Alice offered me a place to stay, in return for saving her life on the streets. I know who you are, and I know Notorious wanted to keep me separate from you and your husband, so that he could raise me to lead on my own in some other part of the world, without being corrupted by you." He paused and took a breath. "But I don't want the future he is shaping for me. I will tell you everything I can, answer every question. I will even fight with you if that's what I need to do to prove I'm not like him."

"Is this you begging for you life?" Valkyrie asked, caught off guard by his direct sincerity. He had a look in his eyes that made him look so much older than he was. And old man in a nineteen-year-old's body. The effect was disarming and unnerving all at once. He thought for a second, and tried a smile.

"I suppose it is, yes," he said quietly. "Is it working?" Looking into those strange cat eyes, Valkyrie couldn't quite muster enough anger to say no. The boy was not his father, that much was clear.

"Yes, it's working." She cocked her head to the side the way Skulduggery did when he was feeling reluctant. "Thank you for saving Alice, Art. She's good at getting herself into trouble. Who knows what might've happened if you hadn't been there." She shot him a crooked grin. "But I'm telling you now. Hands off my sister." He laughed, a sound like bell chimes. "Come on. Let's find you a room, you can't crash on the couch forever."


	13. Slade

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 13...**_

_**Next chapter ^.^ Sorry it's taking so long, I'm back at college now as well :/ But I will finish, I promise! :) Anyways here's the next, bit I hope you all enjoy it, let's see how Grimm's son gets on with his first day as one of the good guys ;) And just to let you all know, Emma Pleasant is actually based on my amazing best friend. She's been my rock for seven years, so I hope you like my interpretation :) Also what would people say to a prequel story, set over the span of Artemis Grimm's life? Review/PM me your opinions?**_

oO0Oo

Emma sat on the sofa, head bent over her book of symbols, her purple-red curls brushing the paper gently. Tanith had dyed Emma's hair for her, without Skulduggery's permission, though Valkyrie had approved it. When Emma had pointed out that Skulduggery would most likely go insane, Valkyrie had just smiled.

"Leave him to me, kid," she'd said. Emma grinned. For the first time ever, her parents were acting like a real, married couple, a proper mum and dad. So she was nineteen and had waited fifteen years for it to happen, so what? She had the rest of her life to enjoy it, and the thought made her unimaginably happy.

She slid off the sofa, intending to search for Skulduggery, and her cardigan caught on the edge of the large coffee table. She sighed and moved to unhook it when a voice to her left startled her. She bolted upright, the book slipping from her grasp. Pale fingers snatched it from the air before it hit the floor, and she found herself looking into lamp-like green eyes. She sucked in a breath.

She'd known he was in the house, but she hadn't him since she'd stuck up for him when Skulduggery wanted to shoot him. She hadn't thought about him at all, really; she'd been enthralled with a particular symbol trick that China still struggled to complete. Drawing the symbols onto her skin had been painful, even by her standards, she'd told Emma.

Artemis Grimm wasn't at all what she'd expected. She'd expected him to be tall and stocky, heavily muscled, with sharp eyes and a hard face, like his father. What she found instead was that he was only as tall as she was, with high cheekbones and a soft, gracefully curving mouth. And he was slender, with musicians hands and only a thin layer of muscles beneath his pale skin. That skin was paper white, with faint blue veins showing brighter at his wrists. His hair was a silky mop on his head, falling into his eyes.

And those eyes. Emma's heart sputtered. He had doe eyes, large and round and full of a keen intelligence, with a shine to them she couldn't understand. Until she saw the slit pupils, fully dilated so they were almost round. Oh, God, they were beautiful. All thoughts of symbols left her mind like water in a stream, along with a large chunk of her intelligence. When she'd stuck up for him, she hadn't realised how devastatingly _pretty_ he was.

"Uh..."

"I believe the word is 'thanks'." Emma blinked; his voice was so silky, it held the same velvet-and-honey quality Skulduggery's did, but with a sensual, charming lilt even the great Skeleton Detective couldn't pull off. Her stomach turned to mush. "Here's your book."

"Uh..."

"Are you quite alright?" When she just blinked at him, he blushed. His skin was so pale that even the slightest blush was obvious. The blush brought a rush of sympathy and with it, some intelligence. Emma took the book gently and smiled.

"I'm fine, it's just your eyes surprised me." She tilted her head to the side. "Thanks for catching my book, though there probably wasn't much point. It's one of China's, no matter how many times I drop it, it won't get damaged." Artemis recovered, grateful for the conversation, the blush fading out of his cheeks. He shrugged, smiling shyly.

"Knee-jerk reaction. I used to drop things a lot, Grimm beat it out of me eventually." He winked. "I'm like a ninja now."

"You don't call him dad?"

"No. Not since I was fourteen. The man, if you can call him a man, is evil." Artemis ran a hand through his hair, leaving it an adorable mess. "Your hair has changed since yesterday." Emma blinked, surprised by his random observation.

"Uh, yeah, Aunt Tanith dyed it for me."

"It suits you. The hair dye smells like lavender." She frowned; she couldn't smell the dye anymore. He grinned. "My nose is a lot more sensitive than yours."

"Anything else you can do better than me?" she asked. He cocked his head, taking the question seriously.

"Yes. I'm part God so I should think so." He looked back at her, trapping her in his green-eyed gaze. The irises were flecked with delicate flashes of gold. "What can I call you? I'm afraid I can't recall your name." His tone was apologetic.

"Emma, but Alice calls me Moo."

"...Moo? May I ask why?" He seemed genuinely interested, curiosity flaring bright in his strange, iridescent eyes.

"I'm not sure, she's called me it since she met me, when I was four years old, and I guess after so long it just stuck with me. She only ever says Emma when she's mad at me."

"Is she mad at you often?" he asked.

"I don't understand you," she said abruptly, and his brow furrowed as his eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "You had everything the son of an evil demigod could want and you left it all behind. You were set to rule your own area of the planet, you could do absolutely anything. How does a boy that has grown up all his life with a monster still grow up with a conscience?"

"My mother." He smiled a pained, sad smile. "My mother was the one who kept away my evil."

"Your mother kept you good when you lived with _Notorious Grimm_? Is she a saint or something?"

"No, she was human. I never met her; Grimm killed her right after she gave birth to me. For four years he raised me alone, until Wistful came to the battlements and woke him. She brought with her three powerful Necromancers. He killed two, and had the third fall in love with him. Killing the two Necromancers acted as a floodgate; one small act of power and the blood of the Faceless Ones began to run thick through his veins. I was four, and he charged the third one, Melancholia, with the task of looking after me while he tracked down Darquesse."

"You were raised by Melancholia? I fail to see how this gives you a conscience."

"What he did not know was that in the room he left me on a night, my mother had left me a note before she was killed. How she knew where to leave it, I don't know, but she did. I didn't find it until I was fourteen. In the note she called me Jonathan Arthur Slade. She told me I could be whatever, whoever I chose to be. She told me the life she had always wanted me to have, the way she had always imagined her son would be. It broke me to read her words. Something inside me changed." He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, eyes cast down.

"You were fourteen? Hard life," Emma said, not sure what to say, enthralled in the story of this strange, broken boy.

"I was. It took me another five years to leave. My father and his...pets, kept a close eye on me. I was rarely alone. I left on my nineteenth birthday, three days ago, with nothing but the note and the clothes on my back. It was then that I ran into Alice."

"You mean she ran into you. Thanks for saving my sister, by the way." He blinked.

"Sister? You do not look like you are both related."

"Well, adoptive sister. She's Valkyrie's real blood sister. Valkyrie is thirty five, Alice is in her early twenties. I was only young when the Reckoning happened. My parents were killed, but because my magic was so strong already, I survived. Skulduggery found me crying and alone a few days later when he was helping to find survivors in Haggard. When he realised I was alone, he took me in. He's been my father for the biggest part of my life, and because he's married to Valkyrie, that would make her my adoptive mother. I got on with Alice so well that we were more like sisters. It's a dysfunctional family but it's the only one I've got. And I love them."


	14. Surprise!

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 14...**_

_**OH MY GOD JUST FINISHED READING KINGDOM OF THE WICKED. My life is complete...well, until the next book comes out ;) If you haven't read it you need to, it's brilliant! And now my story is going to seem so dull in comparison... But here all you ladies and gents are anyway :)**_

oO0Oo

The last month or so had passed uneventfully enough; Art had settled in, Valkyrie had taken up her elemental training again and Ravel had dropped in once or twice. Vex had left for overseas and China had ressurected the protective bubble around the Edgley mansion. It was nice to get back to some form of normality after so very, very long.

Valkyrie swallowed, feeling strange. Her stomach was churning, her breakfast threatening to pay her a not-so-friendly visit. She'd been feeling this way for days, it was horrible. Without warning, she'd needed to run to the bathroom several times to empty the contents of her stomach, hugging the toilet bowl for moral support. Once again, she bolted for the ensuite, hating whatever parasite was making her ill.

Soft leather stroked her cheeks as gentle, gloved hands pulled her hair back from her face while she crouched miserably over the loo.

"I'm ill. Why am I ill? I hate it. Magic people shouldn't _get_ ill. I hate being sick," she complained.

"It could be worse."

"It could?" she looked hopefully at her husband's big empty eye sockets, searching for reassurance.

"Oh yes. You could have chronic diarrhoea. Now that _would_ be embarrassing." Valkyrie swatted at him and turned away to throw up convulsively, until her stomach was entirely empty and tears streamed down her cheeks. She brushed her teeth to get rid of the taste and stared, dejected, into the mirror. Her cheeks were grey, her lips were grey, she _felt_ grey. She felt entirely drained of any sort of energy.

The only part of her that still held any strength was her gauntlet-covered right hand. Over the years the little vein-like tendrils of liquid metal had stretched right up to her shoulder; her hand was now entirely cased in oxidised metal, silver swirls running through it. It bent like liquid at her knuckles, wrist and elbow, peetering off into thin slivers that curled up her upper arm. Solomon had explained that as she grew older and her magic grew stronger, her container had needed to expand. It was designed to adapt to the ebb and flow of her magic. It had stopped expanding a year or two ago.

"Are you done saying hello to your breakfast now, dearest?"

"I hate you," she grumbled.

"No, you don't."

"I do, I hate you with a vengence. I...loathe you." She smiled triumphantly. "That's a good word for it. Loathe."

"Nonsense, nobody could loathe my elegant charm." He doffed his hat. "I'm a gentleman." Valkyrie snorted.

"A gentlemen?"

"Indeed I am. Only a gentlemen would hold a lady's hair out of her face while she vomits," he said cheerfully. Valkyrie glowered. "Joking aside, though I _am_ rather hilarious, how long have you been ill for Valkyrie?"

"I don't know. A week, maybe? I forget."

"Hmm."

"You're thinking. You know something. What is it that you know? Am I seriously ill? Am I going to die?"

"What? No, don't be so melodramatic."

"I'm a melodramatic person, now tell me what you know that I don't." He tilted his head quizzically. "Don't make me stamp my foot, Skulduggery."

"I'll be right back."

"Skul? Skulduggery! Skulduggery Pleasant get your skeleton ass back here!" The Skeleton Detective just carried on walking, whistling 'The Girl from Impanema' as he strode away. Valkyrie growled indignantly and ran a hand through her dark hair. She hated when he did that. He got an idea, disappeared for a few hours without telling her what on earth he was doing, and then he returned with it all figured out. And the annoying part was that he was usually right.

What she didn't understand was why her getting a tummy bug required a lengthy consideration period. It was a temporary illness, nothing to be worried about. That was all.

She took a calming breath to quiet her jangling nerves, brushed her teeth again for good measure, and pulled her hair into a quick pony tail, leaving the ensuite for the direction of the huge living room. No surprise that Emma was sat with her head buried in her book again. Alice was perched atop a mahogany book case, swinging her legs and reading the original print of 'Warlocks and Werewolves', a small frown furrowing her brow.

"I've read that book," said a voice from above Valkyrie's head. She looked up and raised her eyebrows; Artemis was sat cross legged on the ceiling, reading another book from one of China's many volumes. This particular one appeared to be completely blank, with black pages and a brilliant white cover, though the boy appeared to have no trouble reading it.

"Are we going to have a problem?" Valkyrie asked. He looked down at her, blinking those cat eyes innocently.

"I'm sorry?"

"You're sat on my ceiling. I don't want foot prints on my ceiling. Do you have any idea how hard they are to clean off? I mean come on, it's a _ceiling_, for crying out loud. You don't walk on it, you hang lights from it."

"Tanith walks on the ceiling whenever she wants," Emma pointed out, not even raising her head. "You never say anything about that."

"That's different."

"It isn't," Alice piped up. "While Moo may only be defending her new boyfriend-"

"He's not my boyfriend," she muttered, her cheeks colouring. Artemis merely blinked serenely.

"Whatever, while Moo may only be defending her _crush_, she makes a valid point. You don't yell at Tanith." Emma shot Alice a glare, but said nothing.

"Just sit on the sofas. Sofas are for sitting. Ceilings are for...uh...not sitting. And Alice, get off the bookshelf, that's Skulduggery's favourite piece of furniture."

"I thought his favourite was his mirror."

"Well, yeah, but he likes the bookshelf a lot, so get down." When Alice didn't move, Valkyrie narrowed her eyes. A tendril of shadow snaked across the room and snagged her younger sister's ankle, pulling her off the shelf with a quick, careful tug. Alice made a noise of protest as she was dropped to the ground, but managed to get her legs beneath her, absorbing the impact in the balls of her feet. Artemis detached himself from the ceiling, turning gently in the air and drifting to the floor the right way up. Valkyrie raised her eyebrows.

"I apologise for sitting on your ceiling. From now on I will sit only on the sofas and other furniture meant only for sitting," he said quietly. That lilting voice of his immediately made Val feel bad for chastising him.

"Never mind," she sighed. "I'll just make Skulduggery clean it when he comes back anyway." Alice snorted appreciatively and snapped her book shut.

"I'm going to make some lunch, anybody want some?" she asked. Emma didn't answer, Art rarely ate and Valkyrie turned a faint shade of green. "I'll take that as a no then..."

"Pop Tarts," Emma said. "I want Pop Tarts."

"The only person that can get you those is Skulduggery, and he's not here," Val said, looking like she was trying not to vomit.

"I know," Emma sighed forlornly. "It's times like these when I miss him."

"He's only been gone ten minutes, Moo," Alice told her.

"Yeah but I _really_ want Pop Tarts."

"You should have told him that before he left," Alice called from the kitchen. "Val, we're out of milk."

"Damn lazy cows," Valkyrie muttered. Art looked at her oddly, a small smile quirking up the corner of his mouth, but didn't enquire into the joke. Valkyrie felt a dull longing for the sight of her father in his mismatched socks, her mother making coffee in their old kitchen. She squashed it quickly and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, heading for the nearest bathroom.

oO0Oo

When she emerged, Artemis was leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of a baggy pair of jeans. He wore a dark hoodie, made specially by Ghastly to protect him, and a pair of colourful trainers. A chain, plain silver, hung around his neck. He looked up with concern as she appeared, clad all in black in the doorway, loose wisps of hair curling round her ears.

"Are you alright, Mrs Pleasant?" he asked. She felt a flutter at the sound of her marital name, but pretended grimace.

"Ugh, Mrs, that makes me feel old. It's just Val, alright?"

"Of course. _Are_ you alright though?"

"I'm fine, it's just a tummy bug."

"Mages don't get tummy bugs," he pointed out. "Especially not mages as strong as you. You're strong enough to heal yourself even when you have a fist clutched around your heart. You survived _decapitation_. Something tells me a tummy bug would not be the worst you could ever experience."

"Well, what else could it be? I'm never sick. Even before I had magic I was never sick, but I can't think of any other explanation."

"Hmm. I have a feeling your husband will have worked it out by the time he returns," Art told her.

"What? You already know what it is that's wrong with me?" He nodded. "Tell me then. Come on, out with it."

"You must discover this for yourself, Valkyrie. It is not my place to tell you what is causing your illness."

"So you know what's wrong, but you won't tell me?"

"I've known what's wrong since perhaps a week after I came here."

"You can't tell me that and then not tell me what it is."

"Ask Skulduggery. I just wanted to see if you were alright," Artemis said, and hurried away before she could ask him any more questions. She was really getting sick of people giving her half formed ideas and then just walking away. It was like getting a puppy for christmas, getting all excited, and then finding out that the puppy was only interested in her father, not her. The disappointment was extremely irritating, and her temper was short.

oO0Oo

Valkyrie sulked alone in the living room, moodily flicking bits of fluff from her worn jumper across the chair arm. She was flicking her twelfth piece of lint, and making a sizeable hole in the sleeve of her top, when the door swung open hard enough to bounce off the wall. She jumped, sitting bolt upright as Skulduggery practically threw himself onto his knees in front of her. He pressed his hand against her stomach abruptly, and yet gently, and she felt a strange sensation as he read the flow of liquid and oxygen inside her.

"Oh my. Oh...Oh my," was all he said.

"Yep, you're officially insane. What exactly are you doing?"

"Valkyrie..." he seemed dazed. That was odd. "I...I know what's wrong with you." She blinked.

"You do? Tell me."

"This sickness, Valkyrie, it's not a stomach bug. It's _morning sickness_."

"...Pardon?"

"Valkyrie, you're pregnant."


	15. China's Gift

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 15...**_

_**How did you guys like my cliffhanger? I hope you all know that I have not planned any of this, I am simply writing it as and when something pops into my head :') Quite proud of myself :P Anyway enjoy :)**_

oO0Oo

"Did you hear me, Valkyrie?"

"...I heard you. I just don't believe you."

"When am I ever wrong?" Skulduggery asked, then his head tilted. "Actually, don't answer that."

"I don't see how I could be pregnant, Skul. I have never been with anyone else, and you're a skeleton."

"I don't see it either, Valkyrie, but your bodily rhythms are off kilter, I could feel that much when I touched your stomach. The only thing that could cause that is an unborn child; it would alter your body in a way nothing else could." Skulduggery pushed his hat upwards a little, away from his eye sockets. There was an edge to his voice, a reluctance in his posture that Val didn't like.

"You think I've cheated on you." His head cocked to the side, and her heart sank towards her boots. "You_ do_!"

"It's the only thing I can think of to explain your pregnancy, unless that baby of yours is the next Jesus."

"I can think of an explanation," said a quiet, lilting voice, honey smooth and soft as a wind chime in a faint breeze. Artemis padded into the room. "Forgive me for interrupting, but I can tell you, Mr Pleasant, that Valkyrie has not been unfaithful to you. She bears your child." When Skulduggery said nothing, Art walked a little further into the room. "I know the child is yours because, right from the moment they are conceived, if a child is to be born into a magical community they carry the essence of their parents' magic. This child carries yours, Skulduggery. It also carries the essence of Valkyrie's power, and one other person."

"There's a third? How can there be a third person? It only takes two to make a baby," Valkyrie pointed out, vaguely dazed, one hand pressed against her still-flat stomach, wondering what the life growing inside her would look like, who that life might grow up to be.

"That is true, for the average couple, but you aren't the average couple. Your husband is a skeleton, and as such, your pregnancy should by rights be impossible because Skulduggery lacks the necessary organs. However, someone gave him the gift of a body, and in giving you a child, this other person's magic infused with Skulduggery's."

"I'm not sure I understand," Skulduggery said, sounding uncertain, reluctant, like he didn't want to hear what Artemis was going to say next.

"I do," Valkyrie said. "I know exactly what he means. Skul, the facade, it got me knocked up."

oO0Oo

"I believe I owe you a life, China," said a velvet voice from behind her chair. China Sorrows sat in Gordon's study with her knees drawn up to her chest, a very rare, very valuable book of magic clutched in her slender fingers. She swivelled in the high backed leather office seat, turning to face the skeleton with a gentle smile, once such a seldom seen expression on her face.

"I helped to kill your family, Skulduggery. To give you the chance at a new family was the least I could do, the first step on a very long, arduous road to forgiveness." She set her book on the table and stood up. "I am not the monster I was; now my beloved library is gone, I have had the opportunity to focus on so much more. I have found love, I have found a family, I have found friends. And in you I found that your unshakable anger has quelled, which taught me that our futures are not set in stone. You have shaped yourself into a forgiving, brave man, one who would do anything for the one he loves. Despite your black past, you are good. I hope, too, to be good. This is my next step to becoming so. So no, you do not owe me a life. You do not owe me anything."

"I don't understand, China. What changed in you? And why now?"

"What changed in me? Solomon. I don't understand why he is the one to change me, but he is. And why now? The answer is simple; I finally found a way to perfect the facade. What exactly do you think I've been doing these past fifteen years?" She smiled at him, her eyes the palest blue.

"You gave me a child. China I...Thank you." She had never heard the great Skeleton Detective struggle to find the right words as he did now. "What you've done for me, for Valkyrie...it's incredible."

"You're welcome. The facade will still operate as a full body facade whenever you use it, but it will not produce another child. It simply takes too much energy to create a false body that can give life. As I'm sure you're already aware, a lot of my magic is poured into the symbols protecting this house. The rest of my energies will be used up to sustain your child over the next nine months. Once the child is born my magic will return to me, but as long as the child lives, I will be weaker."

"You would give up your magic to give me a family?"

"I gave up your family for my own gain a long time ago. I destroyed your whole world, and then nearly destroyed you years later when I betrayed you to Grimm, once again to aid myself. If it would make up for my evils, I would give you every last ounce of magic I possess for the rest of my life. I would become a mundane, average human being if that was what was required of me."

"China..."

"You don't need to fight to find your words Skulduggery," she said, smiling an enchanting, wonderful smile, the smile of the truly happy. "You need to go confirm that your wife is definitely bearing your child. You need to tell her that her and that child are everything you could ever hope for."

Skulduggery looked back over his shoulder at China, turning at the door as he left, hesitating on the threshold, and his look, even though he had no face, conveyed all those words he had wanted to say but couldn't find.

oO0Oo

"China. Our China. Really?"

"Yes."

"China Sorrows gave us a baby?"

"Yes?"

"_China?_"

"For the hundredth time, Valkyrie, _yes_, China gave us a baby. You're going to be a mother."

"I'm going to be a mum." Valkyrie's hand strayed to her stomach, and a wonderous smile spread across her face. "I'm going to be a mum, Skul," she breathed. "And it's going to be your child." Her large, beautiful brown eyes were round and bright with undiluted exultation. Skulduggery wrapped his arms around her carefully and yet somehow firmly, almost desperately, like she was the one and only tenuous string anchoring him to the earth around him.

"I never thought I'd be here again," he said softly, his velvet voice a honey-smooth hum in her ear. "And yet here I am, with a wife, and a child on the way. What did I do to deserve such forgiveness?" His question hung in the air while Valkyrie considered her next words, the answer she wanted, deliberating carefully.

"You tried. You tried to make up for who you were in the past. You've been trying every moment since you shed Lord Vile's armour, Skul, and for the moment, your efforts have been recognised by whatever crazy thing keeps the world ticking over."


	16. Terrible Times Lie Ahead

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 16...**_

_**At request of two or three lovely people, here's the next chapter :3 I'm going to upset you all now, I just know it. Teehee...**_

oO0Oo

_Grimm stared at a crack in the ceiling above his head, the same crack that he'd stared at for months. Damn them. Damn them all. How could he have been so dim? **Of course** a raid on the Edgley manor was a bad idea. **Of course** the Underlings would be slaughtered. And most importantly, **of course they would fail to retrieve Artemis.** The news that had come back to Grimm was both good and not so good; the location of the house and the mage stronghold had been momentraily revealed as Miss Sorrow's wards came tumbling down. The bad news was that Artemis had not been located. No doubt now he was in the hands of the skeleton, either dead or worse, converted. His mother had already weakened his mind, and the several months he'd spent in their company would have broken him entirely. Unless of course he was dead._

_Melancholia lay across Grimm's chest, slumbering gently, her scarred skin bare, blonde hair falling into her face. Small creases of worry lined the corners of her eyes, unnoticeable to most. The loss of Artemis, for well over half a year now, had troubled her. She had believed in Grimm, and his profound ability to raise this world from the mess of the human race, and from the weak minded mages that hid so listlessly in the shadows, and she had believed perhaps even more profoundly that Artemis, the boy she had raised since he was four, would follow in his father's footsteps. His disappearance had affected her deeply._

_Grimm slid her off his chest and left his bed to pace the halls of his castle; the Underlings had renovated the damage, extended far out into the surrounding hills and up, the towers soaring towards the clouds, ending in crenelated teeth. Outside one of the many windows, Grimm caught a glimpse of angry, roiling black clouds unsheathing bouts of harsh rain, rain that pelted the ground like liquid bullets, pitting the earth over and over. The weather hardened terrain outside was worn and lonely, a sight that brought comfort to Grimm._

_He turned away and continued his pacing, hands clasped behind his back, mulling over the news the raid had brought him. There had been no news of any further activity in the city streets, no sightings of Artemis or even the skeleton and his companions. Nothing new to go on. Grimm narrowed his eyes, dredging information from his memories. He didn't know the exact location of the Edgley house, nor had he had any reason to learn it, until his son had vanished. He had a vague idea of where it might be; China Sorrows had put up some strong wards, slipping under the radar, wards maintained by the majority of her magic, that much he knew. Through trial and error, he could locate them._

_The only way to get a job done was to do it yourself. Grimm's smile was a knife blade in the dark._

oO0Oo

Valkyrie patted her swollen stomach, grimacing at the ache in her lower back as she wandered into the living room. Alice had left a mess in her wake; books on the floor, an empty mug on the table, her boots strewn over the rug, jacket draped across the chair arm. Val sighed and shuffled over to clean it up, bending over to reach for the boots. The life inside her kicked and she gasped as a sharp pain shot across her lower stomach.

Skulduggery came bounding in, tie loose, hat gone, dressed in his shirt sleeves with the top buttons open. He snagged the boots and steered her over to the sofa, talking rapidly.

"Are you alright? Is the baby okay? You shouldn't be tidying Valkyrie, it's not good for little Borris."

"I'm not calling our baby Borris."

"Borris is a wonderful name."

"And what if it's a girl?"

"Borrisetta."

"You are not naming my baby Borrisetta. That's not even a_ name_." She flapped her hands at her husband, shooing him away. "I can sit down myself, I'm fine. Anybody would think _you_ were the pregnant one." As her pregnancy had progressed, Skulduggery had become amusingly neurotic. It was sweet, and very annoying. He followed her around, watched her when he thought she wasn't looking, and smoothly steered her away from anything that might damage his baby. Which, incidentally, was pretty much everything she seemed to do. She moved to pick up Alice's jacket and he slipped it out of her fingers immediately.

"You'll stress Borris out, you need to sit down. Do you want a cup of tea?"

"No tea, I want to be treated like a normal person." He looked at her stomach, her face, and then back again.

"I'm not sure anybody with a belly that size could be treated like a normal person," he said doubtfully.

"Are you calling me fat?"

"Er..."

"You are. You're calling me fat."

"I'll get you that tea," he said quickly, practically running for the kitchen. She sighed, smiling despite herself, and bent to pick the book off the table. "Oh," she gasped when the pain struck again, discomfort blossoming around her lower stomach. Oh God...

The book fell from her hand, and at the sound of the thud, Skulduggery's head popped back round the door.

"Valkyrie, are you...Oh." He saw her, one hand on her stomach, the other braced against the sofa arm. She concentrated on her breathing, trying to regulate it, her heart thundering in her chest. "Is it happening? Do I need blankets? What do I do? Tanith!" Skulduggery's voice rose in volume as he jogged from the room, calling for someone who'd know what to do.

"What the Hell are you yelling at me for?" The blonde woman asked grumpily as she caught him running down the second landing. He skidded to a stop and grabbed her wrist.

"You, come with me, now." He pulled her along behind him, and she was helpless to resist, bleary eyes blinking sleep away desperately as she stumbled after him. If he'd had a heart, it would've been pounding against his ribs, both with excitement and fear. He skidded through the living room doorway to find Valkyrie where he'd left her. All traces of sleep left Tanith's face, and in her pink bunny pyjamas, with her hair a haystack on her head, she lurched forwards and immediately started snapping out instructions, and Skulduggery, out of his depth and out of ideas, followed them sheepishly, fetching towels and blankets.

Artemis walked into the living room and stopped, his mouth opening in surprise as he took in the scene before him. Tanith was speaking to Valkyrie in a low, gentle voice, while Valkyrie clung to her and grimaced in pain, and Skulduggery looked on, bouncing anxiously from foot to foot, a gesture so unlike him that even Artemis realised it was out of character.

But what was more worrying was the ominous sense of something about to go horribly, terribly wrong. He frowned and made his way over to the huge bay window at the front of the room, twitching the curtain back to look out. At first nothing seemed amiss, and then his ears popped as the air pressure changed.

A winged figure came sailing through the clouds, just as Valkyrie let out a pained whimper.

"Holy cow," Tanith muttered. "Heads up guys, it won't be long now."

The figure in the clouds hit the ground with tremendous force, deep cracks in the earth spidering out around him as he landed on one knee. He raised his head to the window and caught Artemis's lamp like green eyes in his own. He smiled.

"It appears we have bigger problems than childbirth," Artemis said, fear clenching round his heart with an iron grip. Oh, they were in serious trouble.


	17. Break In

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 17...**_

_**Neeeeeeeeeeeext chaaaaaaaapteeeeeeerrrrrr! Sorry I had to make you guys wait but I've been busy again, so anyway let's see what happens in this one! S'all kicking off now ;)**_

oO0Oo

Valkyrie gasped in pain, doubling over while Tanith spoke to her in a calming voice. Ghastly, Alice and Emma came rushing into the room, skidding to a halt, closely followed by China. Even Echo Gordon left his study for the first time in weeks; he'd been recording his latest book for a while, as an effort to become the first published author since the Reckoning.

"What's happening? What have I missed?" he cried, and then he saw Valkyrie. "Oh my, I'm going to be a great uncle!"

"You knew this nine months ago," Valkyrie said through gritted teeth, eyes closed against the discomfort.

"Well, yes, but nine months ago I saw you blowing up like a balloon, I never thought you'd actually have, you know, a_ baby_." Skulduggery actually stopped to tilt his head oddly at Gordon.

"Babies do tend to arrive after a pregnancy Gordon," he said.

"Is this really important?" Art asked, vexed. "Grimm is outside waiting to kill us all."

"Good afternoon," said a cold voice. Grimm, his black wings shifting, strode into the room and looked round at them all.

"I thought you said he was outside," Alice hissed.

"He _was_," Art shot back.

"Well it doesn't freaking look like it!"

Skulduggery raised his gun and fired of six loud, true shots. All were on track, aiming for critical hits, one to each eye and the other four at his chest, all at point blank range. Just an inch from his body, the bullets stopped and clattered to the ground, their deadly energy gone. Grimm smiled.

"Isn't this lovely?" he drawled. In the same room I have my great grandaughter and my son! How wonderful! What a brilliant family gathering."

"I am not your son," Artemis said.

"Excuse me? Who's son are you then, the Tooth Fairy's?" Notorious grinned wickedly. "Artemis, come here." When Art didn't move, he tilted his head.

"My name is not Artemis." Grimm smiled, a knife blade through water.

"Clever boy. Tell me, what name did you choose when you left? What pitiful little name broke you of your obedience?"

"My name is Jonathan Arthur Slade. I have taken the name given to me by my mother, my _real_ mother, not that witch you had taking care of me these past years."

Notorious, moving like lightning, had Art slammed against a wall, held aloft by his throat. The cool smile on his face might have been the same expression found on someone winning a casual game of chess. To his credit, Art himself didn't flinch, and Emma felt a twinge of sadness. Clearly he was used to this sort of behaviour. His feet dangled a foot off the ground, and yet he held his father's stare with intense eyes, not blinking, seemingly unaffected by the pressure at his throat.

"That witch, as you so kindly described her, cared for you."

"Cared? That's funny. Neither you, nor her, know the meaning of the word care. Now put me down." Grimm blinked.

"What did you just say."

"You heard. Put. Me. Down." Art gazed levelly at his father, and to his surprise, the winged man lowered him back to the ground. He braced himself, expecting a fist to the ribs. When it came, it was much stronger than he expected. He felt his rib cage buckle inwards, and for a second he was weightless as he shot across the room and blasted through a large window. The glass cut his skin, and the ledge struck his head as he flew, landing in a bleeding heap outside. Emma yelled and ran out after him, narrowly missing the broken shards lining the edge of the frame as she hopped over the sill.

A sharp, twisting pain shot through Valkyrie's lower back and she groaned in pain. Immediately, Skulduggery's hand was on her shoulder, squeezing gently to try and soothe her, while in his other hand rested his beloved gun, already reloaded and aimed right at Grimm.

"Get out." Grimm blinked, turning his attention to Skulduggery.

"I'm sorry?"

"How dare you force your way in here when my child is about to be born. _Get out_."

"Well well, who knew you had a spine beneath that ridiculous suit."

"I'm a skeleton, I'm nearly _all_ spine. For a man that claims to be thousands of years old, your anatomical knowledge is somewhat lacking."

"Don't insult my intelligence," the winged man said, flashing a glare at Skulduggery.

"I can't insult something that doesn't exist." Despite her situation, Valkyrie snorted, amused. Grimm glowered, but refused to rise to the bait. Instead, he fixed his attention on Val, who leant over in the corner of the room, one hand rubbing her stomach protectively.

"Oh my, how sweet. My great grandchild is on its way."

"You stay away from my baby!" she snarled, and a lashing whip of shadow shot towards Grimm, too fast for him to avoid. He only had time to raise his eyebrows in mild surprise, before it speared his chest. His eyes flew open wide, and for a moment, he seemed to be trapped in a bout of acute pain. And then black veins spread out from the ragged wound, vivid beneath his white skin, and his body cracked like dust, sifting away to ash. That ash blew away on an invisible wind, accompanied by a ghostly chuckle. Not a trace of him remained, though the laugh echoed around the room, leaving a palpable atmosphere, thick enough to cut with a knife.

"...Is he dead?" Valkyrie asked after a moment, stunned by her own reaction. She hadn't felt power like that since the Reckoning.

"Oh, heavens no," Skulduggery said. "He's just playing games with us. What you have managed to do is to banish him. I banished him once."

"How?"

"I threw dynamite at him."

"You like throwing dynamite, don't you."

"It gets the job done."

"Playing with fireworks isn't smart you know."

"Grimm was asking for it."

"And Vengeous?"

"I was bored." Valkyrie opened her mouth to reply when her first real contraction hit. She doubled over, yelping in pain, and the room came alive with commotion. All the women gathered around Valkyrie, alongside Skulduggery, who had tight hold of her hand. At the same time, Emma clambered back into the house, looking frantic. Art wasn't with her.

oO0Oo

Valkyrie was on the sofa amid a pile of blankets and towels, pain shooting through her body at regular intervals. Tanith had swept Valkyrie's dark hair away from her face, pulling it back into a loose ponytail, and was repeating soothing phrases over and over. Skulduggery was silent, seated in a chair by his wife, her hand clasped in his bony fingers. She could see a mixture of fascination and horror in the set of his shoulders. He was nervous too; he never said much when he was nervous.

"One more push, Valkyrie," China said softly. Only her, Tanith and Skulduggery were in the room with Valkyrie. "One more and you've done it. When I tell you. Ready?"

"I can't," she whimpered back. "It hurts so much."

"I love you," Skulduggery said softly, speaking for the first time in hours. "And you can do this. I'm right here." He leant over to brush his teeth gently against Valkyrie's cheek in a skeletal kiss, and she took a deep breath.

"Push, Valkyrie," China insisted. "One last push. Now!"

Fire skirted up and down Valkyrie's whole body as she poured all her energy into bringing her baby into the world. The pain was astonishing, but she found it had reached its peak. It was among the most painful things she'd experienced, but it wasn't at the top of the list. She could deal with it.

Like a comfort blanket, dark, cold energy swirled inside her somewhere, and she found that at the height of her agony, she could draw strength from it. She could survive childbirth. After all, she'd been brought back from the brink of death more times than she could count.

A tiny cry rang out through the room, and Skulduggery went entirely still as China lifted a small, wriggling figure into her arms and wrapped it in a towel.

"It's a boy," she said, so quietly, and handed the wiggling bundle to Skulduggery. The second the baby was in his arms, the crying stopped. Two huge brown eyes stared up at him, Valkyrie's eyes, from a tiny, perfect face. Valkyrie watched as her husband looked down at the child in his arms.

"I have a son," he said, and for the first time in all the years Valkyrie had known him, the great Skeleton Detective's voice cracked. "I have a _son_."


	18. Forgiven

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 18...**_

_**Hey guys! So, I'm on holiday from college for a bit now, should be able to update a little more, hopefully wrap this one up so I can start more! :) THIS IS A CUTESY CHAPTER, IF YOU HATE MUSH, LOOK AWAY NOW. Although it does have a bit of drama in it so yeah, it'd be better if you read it :P Enjoy.**_

oO0Oo

Skulduggery looked down at his son and the world fell away. Everything he'd ever hoped for, prayed for, and known he could never have, everthing he'd missed and loved in the world was laid in his arms, staring up with luminous brown eyes. He was so tiny, this little boy. So small and so perfect in every detail. He haid Skulduggery's high cheekbones, the soft, curving lips of his old face and the neat, straight nose. He had Valkyrie's big, beautiful eyes, framed with her long lashes, and there was something captivating about this child, captivating in a way only one other person could ever be. China Sorrows.

The puzzle clicked together; the boy had China's fair skin, her deep black hair and that enrapturing beauty that always shrouded her. Skulduggery didn't care, his baby was perfect.

"He has my ears," he said in a choked voice.

"Of all the things you could say," Valkyrie muttered, close to tears herself, "you choose to talk about his ears. Can I hold him?" Skulduggery didn't want to let go, but somehow he managed, and whatever acted as his heart nowadays swelled with pride and love as he watched his wife cradle her son for the first time. It was a beautiful sight to see, Valkyrie pale and drawn, hair scraped back in a bedraggled ponytail, but glowing like the north star, her smile so soft and caring, a natural mother already, and her tiny son resting quietly in her arms, his little hand clasped around her finger. A tear slipped down Valkyrie's cheek.

"Eyren," she whispered.

"Ay-ren?" Skulduggery repeated. She shook her head.

"Eyren. As in 'Air-un.' What do you think?"

"It's perfect. He's perfect." Skulduggery edged forwards in his chair, and stroked the baby's cheek with one hesitant finger. "Eyren. My little boy. I always wanted a son so I could teach him how to shoot things. And kick people."

"You are not letting him have a gun. No."

"Please?"

"He's a _baby_."

"Well he can have a _little_ gun then."

"Skulduggery, no guns."

"Well you have to at least let him have his own little suit."

"Don't even start."

"I think he'd look dashing in a little pinstriped blue suit. He could even have a hat..." Skulduggery stopped chatting animatedly when he saw Valkyrie's expression, and sagged. "...Or not."

"Definitely not."

"It's time for his first feed, everybody get out. Valkyrie needs to bond with her baby," China said abruptly.

"I need to bond with him too, I'm his dad," Skulduggery protested.

"You held him first, you've already bonded with him. Now it's your wife's turn, so shoo." China ushered him and Tanith out of the room, following behind them. As she reached the door, she paused and turned back, her blue eyes shining gently. There was a delicate smile on her face, so beautiful.

"Congratulations, Valkyrie. I do believe you have just given Skulduggery everything he has ever wanted. Eyren is beautiful, and you look wonderful together, the three of you. You've grown into a wonderful young woman, and I wish you every happiness for the future." She cast her eyes downwards. "I could never hope to make up for the terrible things I have done, but this, at least, is a good start. So naturally I will be available to babysit whenever you need me." She shot Valkyrie a mischievous wink and shut the door softly.

Skulduggery was waiting in the hall, hands thrust into the pockets of his suit jacket, eye sockets fixed on the fround. He was whistling gently under his breath, a tune China vaguely recognised as 'The Girl From Impanema,' the same tune Valkyrie had said he was whistling when he was found in Serpine's dungeon on her first case with him. China smiled; even then she'd known Skulduggery and Valkyrie were something special.

"China," he said, cutting off the song mid-tune. "I forgive you. For everything."

And a terrible weight, for the first time in so very long, came crashing down around China, leaving her light and free, floating. The weight of guilt, just like that, had been released by his simple, heartfelt words. As he turned away, China began to cry silent tears of relief. She hadn't cried in decades.

oO0Oo

_Art strained weakly against the cuffs at his wrists, scraping his skin raw. His hands were slippery with blood, his body lacerated where the whip had struck him over and over. Crushed ribs left his breathing laboured, pain ratcheting through him with every rise and fall of his battered chest. His shirt was gone, his jeans ragged, and the skin beneath was black and blue, littered with a myriad of gashes both shallow and bone deep._

_Melancholia stood before him, snarling, shadows coiling around her, thrashing like angry snakes. Grimm watched her mutilate his son, opening more slow, ragged welts in his shredded skin with cries of malicious exultation. Every time Art screamed in pain his father's jaw tightened a little more, but he made no move to protect his own flesh and blood. Instead he allowed the torture to continue for endless hours of white hot agony._

_Finally, the punishment ended, and the cuffs were unfastened. Artemis dropped to the ground in a crumpled, bleeding heap, lacking the energy to even whimper as his head struck the cold, hard concrete. Strong arms lifted him and carried him somewhere, dumping him carelessly on a rough cot. No bandages were placed on his wounds, no new clothes to replace his ruined attire. Not a word was spoken to him. _

_Art curled up against the pain, knowing he was trapped inside Grimm's ridiculous castle. _

_**There is no hope for me now**..._

oO0Oo

Emma was pacing the floor, eyes glowing a deep violet as she searched for Art. She had his bracelet in her hand, and was drawing his essence from the worn leather chord, trying to pinpoint him in the labyrinth of ruined streets and disused roads that littered most of Ireland. It was frustrating to come up empty again and again, to know he was out there but not knowing where. She hoped he wasn't dead, surely even Grimm couldn't murder his own son in cold blood, could he?

Ghastly and Fletcher watched her wearing a trail in the living room floor in silence, Ghastly with Eyren on his lap, Fletcher nursing a mug of coffee. Eyren, for his part, dozed peacefully as Ghastly absently stroked the shock of fluffy black hair on his head.

All of a sudden, she caught a scent of something, just a whisper of a life, buried in a shrowd of blackness, and she knew. She knew that Art was in terrible trouble, perhaps dying. She knew that even as she recognised his life light, she might already be too late.

"I've found him."


	19. The Dying Room

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 19...**_

_**Next chapter is here at last, long awaited I know. Again. Apologies for being so bad at updating all the time, tis hard to balance everything AND still keep up with this. But yeah, anywayyyyyy...**_

oO0Oo

_Art curled up on his dirty, bloodstained blanket, pain racking every inch of his body. He'd been there for days, slowly bleeding out, nobody had dressed his wounds or cleaned him up, nobody had given him clean clothes. He'd been given a plate with a chunk of stale bread and a glass of stagnant water. Both stood untouched; he couldn't move across the room to get them. Melancholia had sliced many of his major muscle groups in her black rage, and while the need to move was great, the pain was too agonising to bear. Fever, interspersed with periods of dizziness that gave way to unconsciousness, rendered him permanently nauseus. Sleep came and went, providing no relief. He dreamt of fire sweeping across his skin, sizzling his nerve endings. And when he awoke, that pain remained in the myriad of bone-deep welts flecking his ruined body. He could feel his life slipping away from him, day by day, minute by minute._

**_Nobody is coming for me..._**

oO0Oo

Skulduggery signalled for everyone to be silent. He, Valkyrie, Emma, Ghastly, Tanith, Solomon and Alice formed the rescue party. Erskine and Fletcher had disappeared to deal with a crisis in a survivors pocket in America, somewhere near Texas. China and Gordon had opted to stay behind to take care of Eyren. Skulduggery had wanted so badly to stay, but the look on his adopted daughter's face as she considered facing Grimm without him had swayed him. They stood now at the outskirts of the castle walls.

It was a monumental structure, hundreds of feet tall, cleaving a giant pit in the centre of Haggard. Constructed of millions of thick, viscous black webs, some as thick around as a tree trunk, others no thicker than a strand of human hair, each one intertwined with hundreds of others to create thick, sticky, sturdy walls. Here and there, boulders were tangled in the webbing like the castle had grown there over time, it's great roots tearing up chunks of earth and lifting them to the skies as it stretched upwards. The peak of its great roof consisted of twisted spires and crenellated walls, an entire medieval castle of gooey black strands.

The land arounds the castle was barren, flat ground, wide patches of dead, flattened grass interspersed with the empty, jagged foundations where houses once stood. Cracked concrete roads wound between the empty plots like veins through a dead autumn leaf. Here and there the land was charred, as though a terrible fire had ripped its way through the town. Valkyrie imagined that this was perhaps what Chernoble looked like after the nuclear reactor imploded, or Nagasaki and Hiroshima might have been left after the atomic bomb. A dead, barren wasteland void of life and hope.

"The entrance I found is this way," Valkyrie said. She was clad new protective clothing; black trousers that fit close to her legs, with tall, heavy boots and a tunic identical to Tanith's, though where hers was brown, Valkyrie's was black. Over her arms was a short black combat jacket with three quarter length sleeves. Her right hand shone metallic silver as always, her left covered by a fingerless glove, wedding ring glittering on her finger. As it glinted in the light, Skulduggery's hand strayed to his collarbones, where his own ring rested on its delicate chain. Happy memories flickered distantly in his skull.

"You found this?" Tanith asked, raising her eyebrows at a small, ragged hole in the wall before them. "It looks more like you_ made_ it."

"I might have borrowed your spare sword once or twice," Val replied, smiling tightly. "The webs took me days to cut up."

"So this is what you were doing when you kept disappearing?" Skulduggery asked with disbelief.

"Yes. This isn't the furthest I got though. I got right inside the castle, but it's crawling with weird stuff. The corridors change too. These webs, they're alive. They grow and they change from one day to the next. Get caught when the webs change and you'll be stuck in them until you starve or one of the creeps inside the walls hasyou for dinner. Whichever happens first."

"It took you fifteen years to figure this out?"

"Hell no. It took me five years to dismantle the cloaking symbols around the castle as it was. Since nobody ever comes looking for the castle anyway, Grimm must've decided not to bother replacing them, they've been down ever since. For the last ten years I've been planning and observing. I know how often the walls change, which creatures are dangerous and which are easier to kill, I know exactly how many Hollow Men are inside that castle, and I know the places where Art is most likely to be. While the sizes of the rooms and the number of them change, the general structure of the castle stays the same. Where Grimm sleeps never changes, his throne room never changes. There's a drawing room that likes to shift from one side of the castle to the other. The dungeons never move either."

"You've learnt a lot while you've been away, haven't you?" Skulduggery said softly, quietly proud of both Valkyrie and himself. He'd taught her well, and she's exhausted every investigative technique she knew by the looks of things.

"I learnt from the best," she answered, giving him a meaningful look, before turning back the hole. "Let's go.

The hole was barely wide enough for Ghastly's muscular shoulders to squeeze through, and the wall was over three metres thick. The webs snagged on their clothes and hair as they crawled, and Alice began to find herself very short of breath very quickly. She hated small spaces. She couldn't imagine what it must be like to become trapped there, to die in that small, dark, tight little tunnel.

But soon enough she was out, and a harsh, fresh wind was whipping her hair back away from her face. She gulped in a few deep breaths and patted the hilt of her Katana for moral support. Emma appeared a moment later, her cheeks rosy. Skulduggery simply raised himself up into the air and over wall, landing smoothly beside his wife at the same time that Ghastly popped his head out of the hole. Tanith and was right behind him, and Solomon shadow-walked the short distance. Valkyrie was the last to appear; she also shadow walked, though much more smoothly than Solomon could ever dream of.

The land before them was flat and bare, with only a few chunks of ragged concrete here and there to provide shelter. Valkyrie crouched down low by the wall, and the others mimicked her to minimise the chance of being spotted by the herds of Hollow Men lumbering around.

"This is the easy part," she warned. "At any one time, there are no less than two thousand Hollow Men within the castle perimeters. Half of them patrol the grounds, the other half serve Grimm and his Underlings, and patrol the corridors. Now if the Underlings were out here we'd be dead already. We need some form of cover, and fast.

"I can handle that," Emma said, smiling. She rolled up her sleeves and tapped two matching white symbols at her elbows. As she spread her arms wide, a small bubble encased them. When they looked out at the grounds around them, it was like looking through the heat haze on a beach in summer. The world outside their bubble shimmered and rippled like water. "There. They can hear us, but they can't see us. Nothing that exists in this world can see through this shield."

"And how do you know that?" Solomon asked, speaking for the first time in a while. This time, it was Alice that spoke, a faint grin on her face.

"Because Moo is the one that created the symbol."


	20. Saviour

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 20...**_

_**Chapter 20 is all done! What's gonna happen I wonder? :P Also, this story has almost as many reviews as Wistful Kisses! I consider this quite an achievement considering I wasn't even aware of where this was going to go when I started it :3 Thank you to everyone who reads, reviews and loves this story! **_

oO0Oo

The symbols proved to be effective against sight; when Solomon stepped out of the bubble, it was as though the rest of the group had vanished, though they could still see him as though they were looking through a rippling curtain of liquid, almost like a waterfall. Skulduggery had to stick his hand out to remind Solomon where they were standing. As the Necromancer ducked back into the hazy bubble, Emma turned to speak to them all.

"Remember what I said. This bubble works on sight, not sound." She kept her voice low. "One wrong move, one foot out of place, Hell, even a kicked stone and they'll hear us."

"You heard her," Skulduggery said. "Watch your step, and follow Valkyrie's lead. She's the only one here that knows this place."

Having been suddenly and inexplicably dumped into the hot seat, Valkyrie took charge reluctantly. She instructed everyone to stay close together and to keep as quiet as possible.

"Normally I'd fly over and drop in from the roof. As it happens, not everyone here can fly, so we're gonna have to go in a different way. Unfortunately that means we have to get past all these Hollow Men. They might be slow, but there's a lot of them, and they can hear as well as any of us can. If it comes down to a fight, then we'll just have to see how it goes. I don't particularly want a fight with them today, I ache still from giving birth, so whoever they hear first, you're on your own as far as I'm concerned." And she set off walking, wishing she could draw on the strength of her magic to soothe the aches of having a baby. Everything was back to normal but the pains remained, an insistent but wonderful reminder that her son was back at home, wrapped up warm and safe in a soft blanket.

oO0Oo

The Hollow Men patrolled routinely in groups of a few hundred, scattered around the grounds at regular intervals, passing dangerously close to them. Valkyrie felt her heart thud a little faster every time the drew nearer. She could hear their papery skin rustle as they walked, and that, to her, was way too close.

It was all going so well, until one of the Hollow Men crossed through the bubble. The others around it stopped and tilted their empty heads, searching for their vanished comrade, while it stood inside the bubble, looking at the members of the group that stood frozen and staring straight back. It stood with a perpetual stoop, heavy hands and feet weighing down its thin papery body. And then it swung a fist and Alice leapt into action, splitting it right down the middle with a loud ripping noise. The foul gases inside escaped and billowed upwards, and Alice gagged, her eyes stinging.

Every head turned towards the noise, and in her distraction, Emma could no longer maintain the bubble of invisibilty shielding her family from the enemy. It disintegrated with a noise like breaking glass, and they were left, exposed, before an army of Hollow Men.

"I think," Skulduggery said slowly, "that now would be a good time to run."

They turned to flee, only to find their way blocked by row upon row of paper soldiers, easy to defeat when alone, but in such vast numbers? They were in trouble.

Tanith and Alice slid into identical fighting stances, swords raised, mirror images of one another. Skulduggery drew his gun and ignited a spark in his fist. Symbols glowed a multitude of colours down the length of Emma's arms as she turned to join sister, and Valkyrie stepped up beside her husband with shadows lashing angrily around her. Solomon smiled dangerously and took a tighter grip on his cane as Ghastly cracked his knuckles loudly. Valkyrie just had time to feel a swell of pride, before chaos descended.

Before she could summon shadows to defend herself, a Hollow Man was thundering towards her, heavy fists swinging awkwardly. She only had time for physical reactions; she twisted and the Hollow Man flipped, landing hard as she ripped its arm off, turning her face away from the vile gases. Before anything else could grab at her, she rose off the ground, gauntleted right hand dropping through several degrees centigrade in seconds. Shadows lassooed round five or six of the creatures and pitched them high into the air, where Skulduggery set them alight with twin streams of flame, their charred remanats fluttering down in a shower of ash flakes. Ghastly and Solomon were back to back, as were Tanith and Alice, all throwing punches and swinging deadly blades and shadow shards. Emma ran between bobbing figures, touching each one of them on the shoulder with finger tips that glowed a faint green. Every Hollow Man she came into contact with swelled up and exploded, sending disgusting vapours everywhere.

"Go find him mum!" she called to Valkyrie, and Valkyrie knew immediately who she meant. She turned and ran.

oO0Oo

_Art could hear sounds. Noises. He could hear things coming from a distance, echoing through the webbed castle walls, down the long, ever-changing corridors to the Dying Room. That's what he'd come to call the dank hole he'd been left in; the Dying Room. A rather apt name considering his situation. Amid the haze of fever, as infection set into his wounds and sickness wracked his body, he managed to identify the alien noises as the sounds of fighting._

_It didn't matter, they'd never find him. He was doomed to die, he'd already accepted his fate, and now it was just a matter of waiting for darkness to take him. He assumed he'd just fall asleep and simply never wake up again. He hoped that's what would happen, anyway. The thought of dying awake and knowing it was coming was almost too terrifying to bear._

_And then he heard a voice. A single shout echoing through the castle, like a whisper snatched away on the wind. _

_"Art, where are you?!" _

_He tried desperately to place that voice with a face, any face floating around in his jumbled brain. Finally he found one that seemed to fit. Valkyrie. But it didn't matter. She was still so far awau, and he felt so very tired, and so very heavy. He could feel his breath slowing down. _

_'How ironic,' he thought faintly. 'How bitterly, terribly ironic, to die just moments before I am to be rescued. If Emma could see me now, she'd be ashamed.'_

_He didn't feel his head connect with the rough cot as he slumped sideways into darkness._


	21. Too Little, Too Late

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 21...**_

_**Oh wow! Only three more reviews and I've officially matched the number of reviews I recieved for Wistful Kisses! Thanks for such a massive swell of support guys, it's much appreciated! Anywaaaaaaay, where were we?**_

oO0Oo

Valkyrie burst into a tiny square room. It was entirely bare, save for a bowl with a lump of mouldy bread, a cup of cloudy, stagnant water, and an uncomfortable-looking wooden cot, stripped bare of blankets and pillows. A figure lay on that cot, curled in on himself, knees drawn up to his chest. Deep, oozing lacerations covered his bare torso, were visible beneath his shredded jeans, and ripped their way across his delicate, beautiful face. Beneath all the blood and grime, his skin was a deathly grey, sallow and pale, and most likely cold to the touch. His eyelids were the pale blue of death, one of them torn to reveal the eye beneath. Clearly Melancholia had been let off her leash.

Poor Art. Poor, ruined, broken, battered Art. Valkyrie felt sick; to see how damaged his delicate body was, to think how much pain he must have been in while infection ate away at his life, and his blood slowly saturated the wood, it felt like a stab in the stomach. He was contorted, curled so tightly into a ball. Valkyrie felt her eyes fill with moisture, a lump forming in her throat. She only hoped rigor mortis hadn't set in; there was no way she could move him if he was completely seized up.

She padded across the webbed floor; it was clean, save for a thin trail of dried, brown blood still stuck to the stones scattered on the ground. He must have been carried here after he'd been savagely tortured, and left there to die. As she drew close to him, she began to understand why he hadn't made a move to eat the bread, and why the water had been left to sit. Many of his major muscle groups had been severed, leaving him virtually immobile. Even if the infection hadn't killed him first, or the blood loss, the lack of water and starvation would've gotten him soon enough.

She leant down and gently took hold of one of his arms. To her surprise, his skin was still warm, which meant he'd died only recently. Long enough for his skin to develop the death pallour, but not long enough for the heat to have left. A flutter of something rose in Valkyrie's chest, and her tears spilled over her cheeks. The warm liquid surprised her; she'd seen closer friends die, suffer horrific injuries, and had not shed a tear. But now she was looking at Art through the eyes of a mother. What if it had been her son, lying upon this cot, dead and ruined, his body mutilated, his corpse not yet cold. What if Eyren had been the one on the table?

She shivered, tears spilling faster, and straightened out the poor boy, revealing just how much Melancholia had hurt him. Every inch of his body was sliced open, no part of him untouched. He was still wearing the remnants of the same clothes she'd last seen him in, when his grey jumper was still on him, dark jeans still intact. His dark hair and bright green eyes had been shiny, his cheeks slightly rosy with adrenalin. The last time Valkyrie had seen this boy alive, his father had pitched him through a glass window.

She stooped to lift him as gently as she could, no help from her necromancy, just her own strength to carry the boy away from his death bed, back to people that love him, away from that horrible place. She needed to get his body back to Ghastly, so that he could be taken back to Gordon's and buried properly. Fighting Grimm could wait; giving Art a proper burial was more important.

oO0Oo

She left the room without looking back, so careful with Art, tears streaming down her cheeks. She knew his mother was dead, and it was probably a small mercy that she wouldn't have to bury her son. Valkyrie couldn't imagine the pain a parent must go through to bury their baby, and she kept seeing little Eyren with his pale green eyes, smiling up at Skulduggery while she watched them together. The thought of losing either of them was enough to make her knees weak.

She rounded a corner and was confronted with the sight of her husband, leading her friends and family towards her. They stopped immediately when they saw the body in her arms. Emma froze, eyes fixed on the pale corpse.

"...Art," she whispered, her vision already beginning to swim.

"I'm sorry," Valkyrie said. "I was too late." Alice took Emma's hand and squeezed gently as Skulduggery came to take Art from the arms of his wife.

"No, this wasn't your fault," he said in that soft, liquid honey voice. "This is not down to you."

"I was too late to save him Skulduggery. Literally by perhaps two minutes. He was still warm Skul. If I'd been faster-"

"If you'd been faster he'd have died right in front of you, mum," Emma said quietly. "Look at him, look at what they did. Look at the wounds, mum. We'd have had to have gotten here days faster than we did. We couldn't have come any faster than we did. Not with Eyren being born and me having to fight my way through whatever mess those webs are causing just to pinpoint his aura. It was impossible."

Emma came forwards to stand close to Art, who lay limp and quite dead in Skulduggery's grasp. Solomon watched in solemn silence, shadows writhing around the tip of his cane, and the curly haired girl stroked Art's cheek just once.

"Are you alright Moo?" Alice asked softly. When Emma didn't answer, Tanith spoke up.

"Let's get him home. If there's any place Art would never want to be right now, it's here."

oO0Oo

They turned to leave, and stopped dead when a figure rounded the corner. This was a figure in a long, dark cloak, a figure with lank blonde hair and scarred skin. A figure with red eyes. Melancholia, the murderer.

Before Melancholia could do anything, Valkyrie unleashed such an onslaugt of shadows and pure, venomous rage that Melancholia was on the ground and bleeding in a matter of seconds. Valkyrie knelt on her chest, pressing a knee down on Melancholia's ribcage.

"Listen to me, you murderous, evil little bitch," she hissed into the blonde girls' face. "You killed a child today. You killed a young boy."

"He was a whiney little runt!" she spat back defiantly. "He never would've matched his father!"

"Match that evil bastard?" Valkyrie let out a harsh laugh and pressed down with her knees, feeling Melancholia's ribs groan. "Anybody that could lower themselves to that level deserves to be hung, drawn and quartered. _You_ deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered. You deserve to burn."

"While I'm sure...ouch!" Melancholia gasped, hissing in pain as one rib popped beneath the pressure. The rest of her words were forced out between gritted teeth. "I'm sure you'd like nothing better than to kill me, but instead of focussing on revenge, perhaps you should be more worried about _your son_."


	22. Snatched

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 22...**_

_**Next installment ladies and gents, here's where things get really interesting. Seems this one has been long awaited, the number of people asking me to hurry it up is brilliant! :) R&R please, it's always appreciated! Anyway on with the story, excited for this next bit. And I'm sorry for killing off Art! :( Without further ado, I give you action!**_

oO0Oo

Skulduggery passed Art's body to Ghastly and levelled his gun at Melancholia's head, thumbing the hammer back in one rolling extenstion of his arm.

"What did you say?" His voice was flat, dangerously empty. Valkyrie felt a shiver roll down her back as she realised he sounded more like Lord Vile now than he had in over a decade.

The others watched the exchange in silence as Melancholia's cockiness seeped away, her eyes focussing on the barrel of the weapon as it pointed squarely at her face. Nobody made a move to stop Skulduggery, and it was clear to the blonde girl that she was alone in this. The morals of the good guys didn't extend to saving the life of the woman who'd brutally tortured and left one of their own to die.

"I said you'd be smart to look out for your son instead of trying to kill me."

"I heard what you said, imbecile. I want to know _why_ you said it."

"He's at your house, unprotected, and you're here looking for a dead boy. Good opportunity for someone to slip in, deal with China Sorrows and your son, and slip out again discreetly, don't you think? You'd never even know, at least not until you returned." She smiled sweetly and Valkyrie snarled. Melancholia refused to flinch. "Don't believe me if you don't want to, that's up to you. But why would I lie when to hide the truth means you have even more of a reason to kill me right here?"

"...She's not bluffing," Skulduggery said softly, gun wavering. "Valkyrie she's telling the truth."

"What does Grimm want with my son you officious bitch?" Valkyrie snarled, yanking Melancholia's head round to face her.

"A replacement of course. For Artemis. Since his son failed him, why not take yours? You're a direct descendant, your baby has as much of a chance at becoming great as Artemis did, perhaps more so now he shares your combined strength. He might make a formidable leader one day."

"He wants to recruit my son for his crazy leadership scheme?" Valkyrie asked, and Melancholia nodded. Anger boiled up inside her, cold and raging. How dare they use her to destroy everything? How dare they kill her family, destroy the town she grew up in, put her baby sister in danger? How dare they ruin her marriage, kill an innocent, intelligent young man? And more than anything else, how _fucking_ dare they go after her son?

Valkyrie threw Melancholia to the ground with such force that her face struck the stones and her skin split, blood washing over her cheek. Melancholia gasped and turned onto her back as a huge, deadly whip of shadows rose up and came screaming towards her, looking to cleave her in half. She wouldn't even have time to cry out...

A flash of bright purple caused the shadows to disintegrate, and Melancholia raised her hand to shield her eyes from the glare. When she turned back, the curly-haired girl had her fist outstretched, purple intricacies glowing in swirling patterns across the back of her knuckles. Valkyrie took a step back, shaking her head.

"No. I will not kill you. I'm better than that. Better than _you_." She turned away and began to jog down the corridor. Ghastly, Solomon, Tanith and Alice all followed. Only Skulduggery and Emma remained behind.

"Dad, come on. We need to go, we don't have time for this," she said, tugging on his skeletal arm, fighting the burn of tears at the back of her throat. Skulduggery stayed still for a moment, before tucking his gun away and turning to go. As they left, Melancholia spoke.

"Make sure you find a nice little hole for the boy, after the infection he's had he'll start to smell terrible."

Emma stopped dead, her expression flattening out, turned, and walked right back to the blonde woman, symbols on her fingertips glowing gold as she walked. Melancholia looked up at her from the ground, that smug, evil smirk on her bloody face. Emma crouched down in front of her.

"Die, bitch," she said, and pressed her fingertips to the sides of Melancholia's head. Her skull caved in like a freshly squeezed lemon.

oO0Oo

_Grimm smiled at the unconscious form of China Sorrows where she lay on the sofa, bleeding from a head wound, with a small, squirming bundle in her arms. He lifted the bundle from her grasp and gently pushed the soft blanket back to reveal a pair of deep brown eyes, a shock of hair and a tiny, perfect face. Notorious smiled, cold enough to freeze the sun._

_At his feet lay a crushed echo stone, the pieces scattered across the rug like sparkly confetti. To disarm the pitiful protection around the child had been easy, which was disappointing. Grimm had quite expected Valkyrie and Skulduggery to be around. At least then he might have had a little fun before he killed them. Oh well, no matter._

_Notorious Grimm cradled Eyren, cooing at the small, wriggling child. Slowly, Grimm's wings began to curl round them, closer and closer, until a downy blanket enveloped them both. Shadows drew inwards from the edges of the room, all stretching towards the small space created by the two soft limbs. More and more joined the small cocoon, at first causing it to grow colder. As the child began gurgle uncomfortably, the temperature began to rise again, a dark glow shining out between the feathers. The heat grew and piqued and grew again, and Eyren began to cry loudly._

oO0Oo

Valkyrie burst into the house just as a brilliant flash, both blindingly bright and yet so dark, filled the room. Burned into her eyelids was the vague impression of an angel in the centre of the room, wings wrapped tightly around himself. She knew it was no angel.

Slowly, the ringing in her ears began to quiet, and as the white spots stopped popping in front of her eyes, the room swam back into focus. China was unconscious, bleeding from a deep gash in her head. All that was left of Gordon was a litter of tiny blue crystals; the shattered echo stone. And Grimm. Grimm was on the ground, sitting up gingerly, shaking his head with a dazed expression.

There was one other person in the room. He had Eyren's eyes, but it couldn't be her baby. This was no less than a young man, curled up and trembling on the ground, naked as the day he was born. Strong, powerful shoulders, long limbs and a physique to die for, he had soft, slightly curly black hair, big, brown eyes and a face so familiar... It was. It was Eyren. This man was her newborn child.

She let out a strangled sound and stumbled across the room, falling to the ground beside him and gently taking hold of him, cradling his head in her lap. He looked up at her and she saw a spark of recognition. His hand reached, shaking, to take a careful hold of her long hair, just as he had the first time she'd held him.

"Eyren, oh my baby," she sobbed, her voice cracking. Grimm was still trying to stand, his limbs wobbling like they were made of rubber as he planted his feet unsteadily. He managed to stay upright, and raised his arm to kill Valkyrie, when Skulduggery and a few others came slamming into the room. Grimm sized up the situation with narrowed eyes, assessed his own stability, and thought it best to leave. He didn't particularly fancy his chances against seven of them in his current state.

"I'll be back for him," he warned Valkyrie, and vanished like smoke through water.


	23. Anamorph

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 23..**_

_**Boo! Did you guys like the last one then? Wasn't sure where to go with it but yeah, somehow there's always something around to screw up Valduggery! Mwahahaha ;) Trollolol, next chapter!**_

oO0Oo

Valkyrie and Skulduggery helped Eyren to sit up, while Ghastly disappeared to fetch him some clothes that would fit. Emma scooped up the pieces of the Echo stone and put them in a delicate box that rested nearby on a coffee table, before she went to sit on the window ledge to watch Solomon and Tanith dig Art's grave outside. The body lay beside them, covered by a soft, delicately patterned throw. Art looked so small beneath that thick blanket, so small and so very still...

Alice tried to rouse China, pressing a towel to her wounds as gently as she could. Eyren watched everything with wide, confused eyes, one hand gripping Valkyrie's fingers, the other holding Skulduggery's sleeve. Eyren was wrapped in a blanket, sat on the sofa between his parents.

"He looks like me, Valkyrie. He looks like I did before Serpine killed me." And indeed Eyren looked exactly like his father, but with a muted of version of that vaguely pearlescent beauty thrown in, and Valkyrie's steady brown eyes. He was a beautiful young man. "He has your eyes too."

"He looks so frightened," she replied, and slid off the sofa to kneel in front of her son. "Eyren," she said softly, and his eyes followed hers. It was so strange, like looking into a mirror. "Eyren, can you understand me?" He blinked once, twice, and then nodded slowly. Valkyrie's heart fluttered. "You know who I am, don't you?" He nodded again, responding quicker this time. "And do you know who he is?" she asked, pointing to Skulduggery. Eyren followed her gaze to look at his father and nodded, a faint smile spreading across his face.

"M-...m-...mum," he said. "D-...dad."

"That's right," Valkyrie encouraged. "Can you say anything else?"

"E-...Eyr-...ren. Eyren. My...name...is Eyren."

"Yes, it is. Do you know who the man was that did this to you?" Skulduggery asked. Eyren nodded.

"Gr-...Gr-...Grimm."

Ghastly returned with clothes draped over his arm; a pair of thick, dark grey jeans and a white button up shirt. Valkyrie helped her son into the clothes and rolled up the sleeves on the shirt, turning them up a few times at his elbows. As the cool metal fingers of her right hand brushed his forearm, Eyren frowned.

"W-...W-...Why..." He didn't know enough words to finish the sentence, but she knew what he meant.

"Why is my arm like this?" He nodded. "I'm what people call a very strong sorcerer. A Necromancer." She coalesced a shadowy fire in her gauntleted hand, and to her surprise, Eyren reached over and scooped the fire right out of her palm. It danced between his fingers and spread right up his arms, bleeding over his skin like ink. In moments he was covered entirely in black fire, and his eyes were glowing white. Valkyrie gasped. Skulduggery's head tilted in surprise.

And then as quickly as it happened, it was over. The fire was snuffed out and Eyren was sat there, blinking wavy hair out of his big brown eyes. He looked at both of his stunned parents slowly and tilted his head like his father. He snapped his fingers like his mother and a small black flame danced in his palm.

"Extraordinary," Skulduggery said. "I wonder..." He took out his phone and pressed speed dial, holding it to where his ear should be. Eyren stared, fascinated. "Fletcher? We need you." He pressed 'end' and a moment later Fletcher was in the room with Erskine beside him. Both were dishevelled, their clothes askew, hair windswept. Fletcher's blonde locks were so messy they looked similar to the careful chaos he used to love. It made him look younger.

"Who's that?" Fletcher asked. Valkyrie opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by a flushed looking Alice.

"This is Eyren, Valkyrie and Skulduggery's baby," she said, eyes shining as she took in Fletcher's muscled chest. Valkyrie raised an eyebrow at her sister. For his part, Fletch didn't seem to notice; he looked back from Eyren, to Valkyrie, to Skulduggery, to Valkyrie's stomach, and back to Eyren again.

"How is that even possible?" he asked, clearly hopelessly confused.

"We'll explain later. Right now I need you to teleport around the room a few times," Skulduggery said, waving away Fletcher's questions. The blonde man's eyebrows knitted together, but he did as he was told. Eyren's eyes followed Fletcher as he appeared in different areas. To Valkyrie's astonishment, Eyren began to look at the places Fletcher appeared _before_ he teleported. "Stop," Skulduggery said softly, so Fletcher stopped. They all watched Eyren.

The dark-haired, child-like young man stretched out his arm to reach for Fletcher. The Teleporter responded by walking across the room and stretching out a hand, as though he were going to shake it. Instead of shaking it Eyren just looked up at Fletcher's blue eyes and blinked. The Teleporter staggered back a little, before steadying himself and shaking his head.

Eyren stood up and vanished. Valkyrie turned around and he was there, right behind her. He vanished and appeared back on the sofa again, a grin lighting up his face.

"Just as I thought, he's an Adept. A very useful one, possibly dangerous if he falls into the wrong hands," Skulduggery muttered.

"Meaning?" Valkyrie asked, watching her son disappear and reappear with a series of soft popping sounds, his grin growing wider with every noise.

"His Adept ability is to utilize the abilities of other mages." Skulduggery pushed the brim of his hat up away from his eyes; it was light grey to match his crisp suit. He wore a white shirt and tie, the exact shade of the white band around the hat. "If he touches another mage, their abilities become his."

"So our son has any magical ability in existance at his fingertips?" Valkyrie felt her eyebrows inch upwards.

"It would seem so, yes."

oO0Oo

All heads turned to Ghastly when he entered the room, his handsome shirt covered in muck and grime, hands blackened, with half moons of dirt crusted beneath his fingernails. Valkyrie knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth, and her eyes strayed over to Emma, who had suddenly become incredibly pale and fragile-looking. Val's heart squeezed painfully.

"The grave is finished. It's time to bury Art properly, the way he deserves to be," Ghastly said softly, his kind, scarred face set into a sober expression. Somehow he managed to be serious and gentle all at once.

"On one condition," Emma said softly, and Ghastly looked to her expectantly. "We bury him with the name he chose. Jonathan Arthur Slade."


	24. Saying Goodbye

**_From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 24..._**

**_Hey guys! Almost at 25,000 views for my writing on here! And we've hit the 100 reviews mark! Thank you all so much for the R&R, the messages of support, the useful critique and just generally being wonderful. You lovely people are the reason I continue writing :') Also, as a side note, I thought you all might like to know that I've recieved an offer for a place at Huddersfield University to study a BSc Honours degree with a Major in Psychology and a Minor in Criminology! :D Happy days! This is a short one, and a sad one._**

oO0Oo

The grave was neat, a mound of unsettled earth laid out on a tarp at the side of the hole. On the other side, Art lay wrapped in a blanket embroidered with ornate, hand stitched symbols of protection and peace. Emma shivered; that lump under the covering was all she had left.

Ghastly and Skulduggery raised their arms simulataneously, gently manipulating the air to raise their friend off the ground and over the dark pit that was to be his final resting place. As he was lowered into the hole, Emma felt an almost irrepressible urge to join him there. They'd grown close, she'd grown to love him. And she knew he'd grown to love her too; she'd seen the same look in his eyes when she entered the room that she saw so often in Valkyrie's eyes when she was looking at Skulduggery. Love like that didn't come around very often.

And there it was, all disappearing into that darkness. Taking everything from her, little pieces of her spirit. She could almost feel it being drained from her, all her energy. All her happiness and hopes and dreams skittered away on a harsh wind of grief, leaving her breathless and dizzy. She wanted to lie down with him in the soft, warm earth, to have him pull her close and whisper in her ear beneath a blanket of comforting darkness.

But that would never happen, because he was dead, killed by his own father.

oO0Oo

Erskine and Fletcher stayed for the funeral, and even Eyren was helped outside, stumbling a little as he got used to walking on his newly grown legs. It was hard to believe that just a few hours before he'd been a small, beautiful newborn child. Even as she watched, Emma could see his stride grow stronger, his brow furrowed in concentration.

Everyone gathered around the grave where Art lay in a permanent sleep, pitifully small inside that gloomy space. Erskine gave him an honourable sermon, the highest kind of honour a mage could recieve. To have the Grand Mage read your funeral sermon offered a mark of respect that only a handful of others sported. But in her grief, Emma heard none of his words, not a single one.

All she could see was a myriad of memories. Art picking her book off the ground the first time she met him, Art helping her carry things up and down the stairs, Art grinning at her in the fading evening light, Art sitting on the window seat reading a book. She could see him in her mind, all sparkling green eyes, pale skin and sharp, intelligent wit, so much like Skulduggery's. She could remember the way he made her laugh, the way his face was so open and easy to read, like her favourite novel. That face had become tattoed on the inside of her eyelids. Every sleeping moment, every waking hour, and every second in between since she'd met him had been all about Jonathan Arthur Slade, the timid, beautiful, mysterious young man with a grin like lightning.

Ghastly and Skulduggery picked up a shovel each and began piling dirt into the grave. Every single speck of dirt hitting the bottom felt like a punch in the face to Emma. He was being sealed off from her, bit by bit, like slow suffocation. Except he was already gone.

He was gone, everything she needed was gone, no longer tied to the corpse in the hole. It was already gone. She was left behind, still alive and breathing, without Jonathan by her side where he should have been. How much must he have hurt? How much pain must he have been in during the last few hours of his life? How must it have felt to be murdered by the two people who were meant to care most for him?

oO0Oo

When the last shovel of earth was packed tight into the ground, and Jonathan was sealed off from life forever, the headstone was set in place. It was a simple slab of shadow-infused granite, with glowing symbols inscribed in the thinnest, palest lines of silver, like a spider web glistening with rain. The symbols radiated peace and safety, and ensured that no matter what happened, no damage would befall the stone, the grave, or Art's body beneath the earth.

As the first drops of rain spattered the grass, Emma turned away. She was the first to leave, heading for the house. Once inside she padded mechanically towards the stairs. Towards Jonathan's room.

It was dark and quiet, everything where he'd left it. A pile of books he'd borrowed from her were on the desk, clothes folded over the back of a soft, ornate chair in the corner of the room. The only mess was the unmade bed; the sheets were thrown back, pillows turned over, and a battered note pad rested open on the mattress. The page it rested on was covered in the neat, elegant script she recognised as Jonathan's handwriting.

_Emma, _

_I'm not sure how else to tell you this, I'm not very good with words. I never was much of a speaker. Figured writing it down and leaving this somewhere you'd find it was my best bet. I feel like a complete dunce, and now I'm babbling. Wonderful. Anyway, what I'm trying and failing miserably to tell you is that, well, I love you. I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you. I feel awake for the first time in my life. You make me feel like I'm finally living in the real world. I can't get you out of my head. I'm not sure what I'm hoping to achieve from this, but just know one thing. My heart is and always will be yours._

_Jonathan._

Emma slid off the bed and tried to walk to the door. Half way across the room, she sank down to her knees, then to the ground, and cried.


	25. Eyren

**_From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 25..._**

**_I haven't done this in far too long. Guys I'm sorry for killing off Art but there needed to be more drama, don't hate! Must say I miss him but what's done is done, it was inevitable. Thank you all for the support and replies, makes my day to see people asking for more! :) Also, now four offers for University! One more and I've been accepted everywhere I applied for :)_**

oO0Oo

"Emma, it's been three weeks. You need to speak."

"She won't speak, Skul. She hasn't even spoken to me," Alice muttered, frowning at her adopted sister. Emma sat with her knees drawn up to her chest on the sofa, hands on her knees, chin on her hands. She hadn't said a word to anyone. She'd lost weight, she looked tired. Even her book of symbols, once glued to her hand, lay on a table in her room, gathering dust.

"Emma please, we've all lost people we love over the years. You need to snap out of this, we need you." Skulduggery tried to get her attention. Emma didn't move. Tanith wandered in, whistling a cheery tune at odds with the tense atmosphere of the living room.

"She won't move Skul. Give up, leave her alone. She'll come round,"Tanith said. Valkyrie was right behind Tanith, and her eyes strayed worriedly to her aopted daughter. She looked at her husband across the room and nodded.

"Tan's right. Skulduggery, you should leave her alone for a while. She'll be okay soon, she needs to deal with this on her own terms." Skukduggery straightened up and turned to face his wife, looking as if he was about to protest. She cut him off. "If you continue to hound her, she'll shut herself off completely, for much, much longer."

"But we need everyone we can get, Valkyrie. The vampire patrols grow more frequent every night, the Underlings set up a constant guard around our lands, waiting for a way to get under the wards. It's only a matter of time before China's protections fail and we all have to face the fight of our lives. We need her to fight with us."

"And she will, in her own time." Valkyrie kissed the top of Emma's curly hair and sighed. "Just leave her be. I need you to go train Alice with Tanith anyway, they keep getting distracted, and I know how hard you were on me when I was training."

Skulduggery looked at his daughter in silence, empty eye sockets fixed on her still frame, before sighing, defeated.

"Fine," he grumbled, sloping off gracefully in his dashing black suit.

oO0Oo

"Mother," said a soft, familiar voice from behind Valkyrie. She turned away from her husband's retreating frame to find Eyren standing in the doorway that led to the grand entrance.

"Eyren, where've you been?"

"Fixing this," he said, and held out his fist. His vocabulary had come along in leaps and bounds; in just two short weeks he'd learned to read, to speak, to walk and to interact with others. His words were pronounced with such eloquence any Queen might be proud of. And his voice was liquid gold, smooth as warm honey just like his father's. But when he smiled at her, as he handed her what was in his closed fist, Valkyrie was shocked and delighted to find traces of her own father, Desmond, in the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners.

"What is it?" She asked. When he said nothing, she opened her fist to find the echo stone laying in her palm, all in one piece and glowing gently. The only evidence of its extensive damage were a myriad of almost invisible hairline cracks in the surface. Even in her metal-clad palm, Valkyrie could feel its cool hum.

And then Gordon materialised in front of her, beaming gently. He saw Eyren and yelped.

"Oh my! You scared me there." He squinted. "Who are you?"

"Your great nephew."

"My what? _Eyren?_ Dear me, how long was I in the stone for this time? Last time I saw you, you were in nappies." He seemed crestfallen at missing so much. "Of course, missing the nappy stage would be a good thing, since I escaped having to change them. Not that I can, being no more substantial than a ghost."

"You were only away for three weeks Gordon. Eyren is just under four weeks old," Valkyrie said quietly, amazed. Her four-week-old child had fixed the Echo Stone without even knowing how it worked.

"Please, somebody end my confusion, I beg you. What on Earth happened?" Gordon scratched his head, puzzled. Eyren explained in concise, gentle tones the events of Grimm's break in.

"Ah, I see," his great uncle replied when the young man had finished. "So Grimm accelerated your ageing?"

"He forced my body to develop to the point at which magic would slow my ageing, had I been raised in a naturally magic family like a normal young mage. My guess is that I'm roughly twenty years old, physically. Mentally, I'm much more advanced," Eyren explained, his eyes full of a cool, modest intelligence. He said it without any inflection, like he was commenting on the weather.

"Advanced?" Valkyrie asked before Gordon could interrupt. "What do you mean?"

"I know more than the average twenty-year-old."

"So his ability as a mage is intelligence?" Gordon asked. Eyren smiled.

"Almost. Not exactly right, but close enough." Valkyrie frowned.

"I thought your gift was copying somebody's magical ability and using it yourself," she said.

"It's not quite as simple as that mother," he said, his head tilting so much like Skulduggery's. "I've gained a complete understanding of how magic works." Valkyrie blinked.

"I'm not sure I understand," she frowned. For his part, Gordon just seemed extremely surprised. Eyren just gazed innocently at them both with cool, clear eyes. When nobody said anything else, he tried explaining again.

"One touch is all I need. If I come into contact with a mage, the knowledge of how they manipulate their magic specifically becomes mine. In effect, I can duplicate their abilities."

"That's a very valuable power you've got there, young man," Echo Gordon said soberly. "If Grimm realises that, he'll come for you." Eyren smiled sadly, looking so much older and wiser than he was. And already so very tired.

"He was the one that gave me this ability in the first place. I'm afraid he already knows. It's only a matter of time."


	26. Dreaming

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 26...**_

_**So I've only just figured out I can edit these documents and post new chapters from my phone. Aren't I a clever one :') enjoy anyways :)**_

oO0Oo

Emma tossed and turned in her sleep, tangling herself in the covers, plagued by nightmares. Her body was covered in a light sheen of cold sweat, curly strands of hair plastered to her forehead with the moisture. Her eyes flickered back and forth erratically beneath their closed lids, lips twitching to shape soundless words, a name, a cry for help.

She jolted upright, eyes flying wide open. She was outside, in the grounds of the Edgley mansion, under the moonlight. She'd recognise the landscape anywhere. Except something was different.

She pushed herself to her feet and brushed dirt from her legs, frowning. She was in a pyjama vest and flannel shorts. Her feet were bare and it was getting towards winter, and yet she was content without a jacket.

The rubble. That's what was different. There was none, all of it was gone, the houses still intact, all signs of the Reckoning completely erased.

Tall, spiralling towers of glass rose high into the night, their tips seeming to reach for the stars glittering in a shroud of deepest black above, interspersing the quaint houses, looking so out of place. The moonlight sparked off their smooth surfaces like fire on lapping waves, casting rainbows on the ground here and there. Emma turned to look at the house behind her, only to find that it too had become a glass spiral, smooth and shining and beautiful. When she turned back to look at the expanse of Haggard surrounding the mansion, all the average buildings were gone. Only the glass towers remained.

A heavy silence had settled over everything, reminding her of how the first swathe of fresh snow deadened sounds at dawn. No birds chirruped, no cars rushed by, nothing howled or skittered through the shadows, no one spoke.

And yet despite the silence, the grass, now silvery and up to her knees, swayed gently in a breeze she couldn't feel, each strand swinging through the air in unison. It was strange to be stood there in the dancing grass, to feel it swishing over her shins, surrounded by impenetrable quiet in an alien landscape of crystal towers and velvet skies. She'd never felt further away from Haggard than she did in that moment.

And yet she wasn't afraid; there was only an empty, aching lonelines settled deep in her bones. She didn't care where she was, how she'd gotten there, or how pretty it looked. She cared only that Art was dead. If only she'd thought to look for him sooner. Perhpas he might still be alive...

oO0Oo

A sound, finally a sound in that noise-less, abstract environment caught her attention. It was her name, whispered on a breath, issued by lips that should no longer be able to speak.

_"Emma..." _She wheeled round, trying to follow the direction of her name, eyes darting left and right over the moon-bleached scene surrounding her, but she could find no source.

_"Emma..."_

She started running, not knowing why she felt the need to run, but doing so anyway. Running to the only place she ever wanted to be. She skirted round the side of the tower that was once the Edgley Manor. She ran right to where she though Art's grave would be.

When she saw it was no longer there, she dropped to her knees in the stupid swaying grass and sobbed. She wanted to wake up.

"Emma." She raised her head sharply and her heart dropped into her stomach. He was there, standing in the grass, clothed in his tattered shirt and torn jeans, bruised, scarred skin showing through the shredded fabric. He was pale, and his eyes held the grey film of death, but the blood was gone, his hair was soft and shiny like always, no longer matted to his head, there was no dirt on his skin, and he was smiling so softly.

"Art," she whispered, barely able to breathe. The lacerations that had killed him were now scars, thick white ridges on his skin rather than open wounds, surrounded by bruises that were yellowing, the edges beginning to fade.

"What are you doing here?" he asked her, his feet carrying him soundlessly through the tall grass. He knelt beside her, just out of reach. She wanted him to take her hand, to tilt her chin up and smooth away her frown with his thumb. He didn't.

"I...I fell asleep."

"Ah," he said sadly, his eyes unfocussed. She frowned and waved a hand in front of them. When she recieved no response, she gasped.

"You're blind!"

"Unfortunately it's a curse of those trapped between earth and wherever we go after death. I'm doomed to existing without sight."

"Why are you trapped?" Art stayed silent for a long time, before silently raising his arm, like he was searching for her. Emma let him find her fingertips, and he sighed when she twisted her hand through his, like a great weight had been lifted from his chest.

"I've missed this. Touching. Speaking. It feels like so long since I last spoke to anyone. Being dead, a day feels like a year."

"Why are you trapped, Jonathan?" He caught the tone in her voice and knew avoiding the question wouldn't be possible. He took his time before replying.

"Grimm didn't want me dead," he said eventually. "Letting Melancholia kill me was an overreaction, one he regretted the moment I died. He's keeping me here until he can get hold of Eyren. He thinks Valkyrie's son will find a way to bring me back from here."

"And can he do that? Bring you back, I mean?"

"Yes. What my father doesn't know is that I already know how it could be done. But it involves binding my soul to his. In doing that, he could control me, even make me as bitter and evil as he is. I'd be powerless to stop him."

"How...how would he do it?"

"He needs a symbol that only one person I know has access to. That person is China Sorrows."

"If he got the symbol from China, how would he use it to bring you back?"

"The symbol must be drawn on us both. Which means he'd have to dig me up and carve it into my chest." Even dead, Art still managed to look vaguely sick at the thought. "From what I know, for me it will be more than extremely painful."

"What if...What if someone else were to do it before Grimm could? What if someone that wouldn't make you evil was to carve that symbol into your skin?" she asked hesitantly. He frowned, but answered anyway, grey eyes staring off at nothing.

"Then they would save me. But if I was cut, they would bleed. If I was struck, they would bruise too. Our aches and pains would be shared. To take one life would be to take both. That is why only Grimm would risk it; he's confident that he will never be killed, and if he succeeds in converting me to evil then I too would hold the same confidence." Art tilted his head. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wondered," she said quickly.

"Emma, please tell me you don't plan on doing this yourself..." he asked. When she didn't answer, his grip tightened on her fingers in alarm. "Emma there are so many things that could go wrong with this. If the symbol is drawn wrong it could kill you. You could be stuck here too."

"But I'd be stuck with you, Jonathan, and that's enough for me." His alarm softened, a gentle smile pulling up one corner of his mouth. His hand moved up her arm to her shoulder, and found her cheek, cupping it carefully. He leaned in, smelling of snow in the winter, ice on the surface of a frozen lake, and his lips brushed hers. So soft. She felt his other hand on her arm, the scar across his palm, the skin so smooth and...cold...

oO0Oo

Emma woke up shivering. It was dawn, the sun bleeding into the clouds in the distance, staining the sky orange, and the morning was chilly. She frowned and sat up, feeling short spines of slippery grass beneath her hands. The morning dew had soaked through her pyjamas and left her curly brown hair damp to the touch, raising goosebumps along her bare arms and legs.

She could still feel his lips on hers, his hand on her cheek, her arm, the scar on his palm brushing the back of her hand. Without thinking she ran her fingers over where his hand had been over hers, and gasped when she found her skin was icy cold. A handprint the colour of a fresh bruise had appeared in exactly the place where Art had touched her. It even had a faint white line where his scar lacerated the centre of his palm.

For the first time, she registered where she was. She was outside, sat beside Art's grave, with tears streaming down her cheeks. It had been a dream, she was sure of it. Art was buried in the ground beside her, she'd helped to bury him there herself. And yet she couldn't shake the feeling that somehow her meeting with him in her sleep had been real. How else could she explain the handprint?

She stood shakily, a plan forming in her mind. She needed to find China.


	27. Nostalgia

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 27…**_

_**Next chapter is here :) Right, I'm winging it now, it's been a while since I wrote, thanks my exams and other things, so apologies if these next few chapters are terrible but yeah, here you go guys.**_

oO0Oo

Eyren was at the door with a blanket when Emma came inside, shivering. He draped it around her shoulders and led her to the kitchen. Too tired to protest, she followed her brother in silence and slid onto a stool at the breakfast bar. She felt slightly awkward; the lack of contact with Eyren left her feeling distant from him. She liked him, but she didn't _know_ him.

"Dad told me that the first time he saved mum's life he made her tea with lots of sugar," he said softly. "He said it helped him to get her talking, and that's when their bond formed." He flicked the kettle on. Emma watched him; his movements were nervous and unsure. She smiled.

"I like tea."

"You do?" he looked hopeful.

"Yes." She slid off the stool, still wrapped in the blanket, and padded across the kitchen to stand in front of him. "Dad stood right there when he made mum her tea. Right where you're standing."

"He did?"

"Mhmm. He stands there every morning to make her breakfast." She reached up and tweaked his collar. "I saw a painting of him once, from when he had skin. China painted it. You look like him."

"I do?"

"You do. But you've got mum's eyes. And grandpa's smile."

"I have a grandpa?"

"You did, Uncle Gordon has photos of them in his study. We can go look sometime if you'd like?" Eyren's grin was wide and bright.

"I'd like that very much." He bowed his head and looked at his sister through long, soft lashes. A pang of protectiveness twisted in her stomach; she barely knew him but she loved her brother already. "I thought...perhaps...you didn't like me," he said softly. She frowned, and he raised his head, shaking his dark fringe out of his eyes.

"You thought I didn't like you?" He shook his head. "Why not?"

"Well...you didn't speak to me. You never held me when I was a child." She looked at him in surprise and he smiled. "Yes, I remember being a child. It was strange, all bright colours, loud noises and different scents. I recognise the scent of my mother, my father, aunt Alice, China, Solomon, everyone in this house except you and the man in the stone."

"Sit down," she said. He did as instructed, taking the stool she'd vacated while she made two mugs of tea. She set one down in front of him, and slid into the stool opposite him with hers. He took a sip and beamed. "You like it?" He nodded. She grinned. "Good. ...Eyren, you're my brother. I liked you right from the moment you were born. But someone I loved dearly died very recently. I've been trying to deal with his death, I suppose things got away from me. But I'm your sister, and I'll always love you." She placed her hand over his gently and he smiled, turning his palm up to catch her fingers. He frowned as he saw the hand print on the back of her wrist.

"This person you loved, did he leave this mark?" His head tilted. "Is that why you were outside?"

"How did you-"

"You use symbols as your primary power?"

"Yes but-"

"You see him in your dreams, don't you." It wasn't a question. His clear, steady brown eyes held her for a moment, leaving her feeling strangely vulnerable, like he could see right into her thoughts. His hand covered the handprint left by Art on her forearm, his fingers slightly longer than the dead boy's.

"How do you know that?" she asked, her voice wobbling.

"It's a long story. The short version is that I gain knowledge and magic through touch. Everything you practice, I can now put to use." She frowned, but didn't ask for further explanation.

"But seeing him in my sleep, surely that's just dreams? Not knowledge. It didn't really happen."

"The hand print on your arm says otherwise. Somewhere Art's soul is still floating around. He's reaching you in your dreams."

"I still don't understand how you could know that." Eyren grinned and cocked his head, so much like Skulduggery.

"Magic," he said, and winked one glittering eye.

oO0Oo

_Grimm paced, agitated, dark wings shifting back and fourth. Somehow, China had managed to banish him from the grounds of the Edgley Manor and set him back somewhat; he hadn't planned for that. He hadn't expected to return to the gates, set one foot past her new wards and find himself right back in his castle where he's started. Then again, he hadn't expected Melancholia to be defeated by a child either. They were full of surprises._

_He needed to get to Eyren, but until his Underlings stripped the magical boundaries around the house, Grimm couldn't go near. He hadn't known China to use symbols associated with the Faceless Ones, not since her time spent in the Diablerie, so it hadn't occured to him that she would remember how to block him out, but she had, and it was a set back he wasn't happy with._

_"My Lord," said the latest Underling to become the alpha. "The wards were difficult to locate, but we have found them." Its voice was distorted and gravelly, thickened by its half human, half wolfen vocal chords. "It is only a matter of time before we break them down."_

_"These wards are different to the last ones, they're woven with the magic of the Faceless Ones. Some of you will die trying to disable them. And do it discreetly, we don't need them to know we're coming for them this time." His grin was sharper than a knife blade through flesh._

oO0Oo

"What are you doing, Valkyrie?" Skulduggery asked, arms folded across his chest as he watched his wife. She stood in front of a mirror, turning this way and that, frowning.

"Have I gotten fatter?" Skulduggery's head jerked back, surprised.

"What?"

"I feel fat. Have I gotten fat? I swear I'm fatter."

"...Why do you ask?" he replied warily, fully aware that he was treading in dangerous territory.

"I've given birth. Everyone gets fat when they've had a baby. Have I gotten fat?" She turned back to the mirror, eyebrows pulling together. "Tell me honestly."

"Erm...No. Why are you suddenly having a crisis about how you look, Valkyrie?" Tanith walked past the open bedroom door with Eyren and Emma as Valkyrie turned round to face her husband. She called the blonde woman back.

"Tanith! Come here for a second."

"S'up?" Tanith asked, leaning in the doorway. Skulduggery stood very still.

"Tanith, tell me honestly, have I got fatter?"

"Yeah, why?" Instead of answering, Valkyrie turned and scowled at her husband.

"You lied to me."

I guess that's my cue to leave," Tanith said sheepishly and ducked out of the room.

"Traitor!" Skulduggery called down the hallway, as a cushion came flying towards his head.

"The only traitor here is you," Valkyrie growled. "I got fat and you didn't tell me."

"You're not fat."

"I'm bigger than I was."

"You're not bigger, you're just softer, there's a difference." Valkyrie stopped dead and looked at him. Skulduggery had to fight the urge to bolt out the door.

"...Softer?"

"Oh dear."

"Seriously, softer. That's the nicest thing you can say?"

"I-"

"You're saying I'm unfit," she accused. Skulduggery couldn't resist.

"Would you prefer if I called you cuddly?" He shot from the room, narrowly avoiding a vase aimed at his back. He was halfway down landing when she called out.

"Skulduggery." Her voice was soft and sweet, dangerously sweet. Skulduggery stopped fleeing and turned.

"Yes, dearest?"

"Come back here, would you?"

"I think I'm okay where I am, thank you."

"But I have something you want."

"And what might that be."

"Your hat." Skulduggery reached up to pat his bald skull and cursed. "Come here or I'll stand on it."

"Just like old times," he muttered, and trudged back down the hallway.


	28. Visitor

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 28...**_

_**Nearly 30,000 views on my writing! So happy! Been reading back Wistful Kisses aswell, aww old times :3 Right, here's the next chapter ladies and gents, it's a longer one :) **_

oO0Oo

_Grimm could feel his deceased son pushing against the boundaries between life and death, contacting the adopted Pleasant child in her sleep. It wouldn't be long before Artemis rose, either by himself, or with her help, and when that day arrived, Grimm knew he needed to have Darquesse and Lord Vile on his side. The group in the mansion needed to be disbanded, extinguished, broken apart if he was to have any hope of regaining his son. If the Pleasant girl was gone, Artemis would have nowhere else to turn. _

_And Eyren. He needed Eyren. Such a product of magic not seen since the time of the Dark Gods could not be left with Skulduggery. Eyren held the very essence of Lord Vile and Darquesse in his soul, and the potential to change the shape of the world with a click of his fingers. If Grimm gained control of Eyren, the final pockets of resistance all over the planet would fall. Notorious would be unstoppable._

_He'd be a God._

oO0Oo

"I found the symbol you need," Eyren said, setting a book down on the table in front of Emma. It was getting late and she was tired, so it took her a moment to register what he was saying. "I found this in Gordon's study."

She looked at the symbol on the page and shuddered. It was a vicious shape, all sharp points and jagged edges, carved into the paper before her. The symbol and everything around it felt fundamentally wrong, and that was how she knew it was the one she needed.

"But how do I get it onto him?" she asked. "I think somebody might notice me digging up the body in the back garden."

"You don't need to get it onto his flesh body, only the one you see in your subconscious," Eyren said. "It's written right here."

"I can't read it, I'm not equipped in the language of magic like you."

"Ah right. I keep forgetting that. It's hard to believe I'm not even one yet, I forget that people don't just know what I know." He brushed his dark hair away from his forehead, and Emma saw the youth in his eyes. So much potential, so much intelligence there. Just like there had been in Art. She pushed that thought away with a shiver.

"What does it say exactly?" Eyren peered at the page for a moment and then recited what he saw for her, translating smoothly.

"The symbol does not work when grafted to the flesh. Instead it must be grafted to the soul, thus binding it to the mortal flesh, creating a being neither alive nor dead." His voice had the same honey-smooth quality Skulduggery's possessed as he read aloud.

"A being neither dead or alive?" she quoted. "That sounds ominous."

"It's the same symbol that necromancer preist used to bring Dad back from the dead. Can't remember his name now."

"How did you know about that?" Emma questioned.

"I asked him," Eyren said simply, smiling. "I'm going to bed, it's getting late. I hope this helps you." He kissed the top of her head and ruffled her brown curls. She grinned tiredly and went back to looking at the threatening symbol on the page. It looked like someone had coated it on there in oil.

After a while, her eyelids drooped. She was almost asleep when Alice came wandering into the kitchen with Tanith in tow.

"Moo. Hey, Moo!" Alice snapped her fingers and Emma sat bolt upright. "You look beat sissy," she said.

"Oh, thanks. Where've you been? I haven't seen you two all day."

"We've been training," Tanith said, her head in the fridge. "If you weren't so enthralled in your symbols you could've come too."

"I don't need training, I'm not a physically orientated adept like you two are. I work with books and use knowledge to protect myself. You guys can keep your punching, I don't want to ruin my nails."

"Pfft, you're beginning to sound like China," Alice teased. "Speaking of her, where is she? I haven't seen her around for a while."

"She's been sleeping a lot lately. Eyren's accelerated growth sapped a lot of her strength away. Coupled with the beating she took that day, she's not doing so good," Emma explained.

"What do you mean? Why would what Grimm did to Eyren affect China?"

"Her magic created him. She gave Mum and Dad their own flesh and blood child to make up for all the horrible things she's done. She gave Skulduggery's facade a potent dose of her magic, the symbols she grafted onto him took hours to complete, and they're now imprinted on Eyren's heart and hers. When she dies, her magic will loop back to him and sustain him indefinitely. Right now she's sharing that power with him."

"I still don't see why sharing it would make her any weaker than it did when he was a baby," Alice frowned, pulling the bobble out of her long blonde hair. It tumbled over her shoulders in golden waves.

"What Emma's trying to say is that when Eyren was a baby his magic was developing at the normal rate of any average magical child. What Grimm did to him made his magical development kick start. He's growing in magical strength at an alarming rate even now, and China's own magic is struggling to compensate for that while keeping her strong. To keep up with him, she's left feeling weaker. What happened to Eyren was unexpected and she's trying to cope with it," Tanith said.

"Ohhhh, I get it now," Alice nodded. "That sucks, I'd hate to be her right now." Tanith straightened up, closing the fridge, and shrugged.

"Personally I think she deserves it. She killed Skulduggery's family and gave him up to Grimm. In essence, she killed Skulduggery once and drove him completely insane for decades. She ruined his life twice for her own gain. Now she paying for it." Tanith left the kitchen without another word, leaving Alice and Emma staring after her.

"Well. I guess Tanith doesn't like China all that much," Alice murmured. Emma raised an eyebrow.

"Ya think?"

oO0Oo

Alice was in the field again, surrounded by those beautiful glass spires. Silence was everywhere, the grass swaying in a breeze she couldn't feel on her skin. She was wearing a loose white dress, almost like a night gown, her brown curls loose over her shoulders. Her feet were bare as she trod through the swaying spines around her knees. Dublin looked like it had taken a leap into the distant future; the number of glass towers seemed to have tripled since her last visit to this alien dream city.

She came to the spot where the gravestone should be, and there was Art, standing in the grass, smiling at her. He was still scarred, still bruised, but his eyes were no longer the milky grey-white of the death pallour. They were the brightest green she'd ever seen.

"I've missed you," he said softly. "I was wondering when you'd come see me again. It's awful lonely in the ground."

"Art-"

"You need to be careful," he said abruptly.

"What?"

"_There are some things that should never be done, never be said. This, what you're planning, it should never be done."_

_"I don't understand..."_

_"I know_ you have the symbol I need to live again, but Emma, if you graft that symbol onto me, you're reversing what was always meant to happen to me. You'd be defying all the rules. Rule breakers always meet the consequences." Something was wrong. Something about Art was off. The way he stood, the glow of his eyes, everything about this place was wrong. It suddenly seemed dangerous. Ominous even. The peace was gone.

Emma looked round to see the grass thrashing wildly and thought of a pit of angry snakes. She hated snakes, and immediately wished she'd not thought of them. But it was too late. The glass spires were warping, twisting and melting into ragged, lumpy monoliths along the skyline, like broken teeth in a giant's mouth. The air was turning red with the heat of a sun that should not exist in her peaceful night time world where Art still wandered, waiting for her. This was not that world.

She turned back to Art, wanting to run to him, and screamed when she saw Grimm standing in his place. The winged man lunged for her and she ran, but in this world she was not in control. Her feet slipped, snared by the writhing tendrils of grass, and Grimm stood over her, raising a gleaming dagger. He brought it up, up above his head, the pointed tip sparking sunlight.

And then he slammed it down towards her chest and she screamed, waiting to die, and still the grass snagged at her, and the silence pressed against her ear drums, and the spires of glass continued to bubble away. And still the blade kept coming towards her, right towards her heart.

Something slammed into Grimm and the blade was gone.

oO0Oo

_Grimm was forced out of Emma's dreams abruptly enough to constrict his chest. He was on his knees in his castle, gasping in lungfuls of air. He remembered Eizekeil's knife, the Blade of the Death Angel, slicing into his heart as it was turned on him. Whatever the blade killed in dreams, it killed in reality. It was sticking out of his chestm black blood oozing around the blade, dripping down the pale white skin of his stomach and settling in his navel._

_But Grimm was the descendant of a Faceless One, and it would take more than a knife to kill him. He pulled the blade free with a grimace. _

oO0Oo

Emma pushed herself off of the ground, trembling. Art, the real Art, stood just a few feet away. The grass around her swayed gently again, the spires returned to their sleek, majestic statures, and the sky was a deep blue, speckled with a dusting of stars.

"You're here," Emma said, relief making her throat tight.

"Of course I'm here, this is my Limbo," he said gently. "I'm stuck here, remember. To me, you're the visitor."

"What happened just then?"

"Grimm tried to kill you. He used Eizkiel's blade to try and stab you, and I stopped him. Here, I'm stronger than he could imagine. I have access to all my reserves of magic. Unfortunately, there's no real reason to use all that strength, since I'm nearly always on my own here."

"So you banished him?"

"I did. I actually stabbed him with his own knife. What the knife kills in dreams, it kills for real. It won't kill Grimm, but it will hurt him. He won't like that."

"I should imagine he wouldn't. How did he know I was here?"

"He's the descendant of a Faceless One, and he's my father. He could feel my ethereal self pushing against the boundaries between the life I used to have and this in-between place. I'm stuck like Skulduggery was, unable to move on, still able to see everything going on in my old world, unable to access the next. I'm trapped."

"Isn't there any way you can be free?"

"There is one way. It involves that symbol of yours, but I don't know what that symbol is. So I can't use it. And you can't graft it onto me because you don't know how. And I wouldn't know how to help you do it." He sighed. "I'm fighting this place, but I can't keep it up. I feel like a caged bird." He was still bruised, his eyes that dead-white colours again, the scars standing out in ridges on his skin. "Look at me," he said hoarsely. "I look like a corpse, I feel like a corpse, but I can't move on like one. I might as well be a zombie."

"Art..." she didn't know what to say, so she crossed the space between them and kissed him. The second their lips met, all the air left her lungs and she fell back, coughing and gasping. Art collapsed to the ground, landing on his back, eyes staring up at the sky.

With a searing pain in her chest, Emma sat up, struggling to breathe. What she saw made her gasp.

The ragged symbol was burned into Art's chest like he'd been branded, slowly seeping half-coagulated blood. He lay there unmoving, dead eyes staring. The grass had stopped swaying.

Emma frowned as the light began to dim, the stars fading out one by one. The world around her was becoming still and gloomy, as though winter had moved in and robbed the world of life. Had she killed him for good?


	29. Roger

**_From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 29..._**

**_Two chapters in one night? You lucky people! Guess I'm on a bit of a roll at the moment :) Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day, single or not :) I know I did! 3_**

oO0Oo

Emma groaned and sat up, her chest burning fiercely. She was in her bed, exactly as she had been when she went to sleep. But something was different; she wasn't alone in her room. She panicked for a moment, remembering Grimm trying to stab her with that fearsome blade, before she realised who it was. Her heart leapt.

"Hi." Jonathan Arthur Slade sat on the edge of her bed, smiling down at her with bright green eyes.

"_Art!_" she yelped, tears springing into her eyes abruptly. She tried to blink them away; they blurred her view of him. "I thought I'd killed you!"

"Ssh, keep your voice down. It's 2am, you'll wake everyone up." He settled himself on the bed properly, shimmying under the covers. He was wearing his jeans and a light shirt, his feet bare. The scars were gone, and his eyes were lantern bright in the shadows of her room. She curled into his side, her head on his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her, sighing with relief. "I've waited so long for this." He kissed her curly brown hair softly.

"I thought the symbol had killed you completely," Emma mumbled, fighting off the last of her sleep.

"So did I when it touched me. I woke up outside, on the grass above my own grave. That right there was a nice little experience for me." He shuddered. "It's still on my chest you know. The symbol." He lifted his shirt to show he was telling the truth. Reflexively, Emma's hand went her own chest, which was still incredibly sore. She touched two fingers to the bottom of the centre of her rib cage, and sagged with relief when she found her skin unblemished.

"I don't have the scar, but my chest really hurts."

"It will do, to throw you back like that, the magic would've had to deflect back to you. It must have caught you square in the chest. You'll be sore for a few days now." Art stroked her hair, holding her tight. He was incredibly warm, to say he'd been dead for a while.

"I missed you," she said softly. "I thought I was going to go crazy. I killed Melancholia for what she did to you." Art's head jerked back in surprise.

"You what?"

"I killed Melancholia. When we came to save you, we were too late. You died just a few minutes before we could get to you. She was goading me and I snapped. I fried her brain with the self defence symbols on my palms."

"You went back to the castle to save me?" He sounded shocked.

"Of course I did, we all did. You're as much a part of this family as anyone else now, Art. We wanted you back, we were just too late."

"I'm sorry you had to see me like that. I must've looked awful. I can't imagine what that was like for you."

"That's not important anymore. You're here and you're alive, and that's all I care about."

Art tilted her chin so she was looking at him with those big brown eyes of hers, and he felt his heart squeeze. He'd missed her so much; in that Limbo world, he's been so alone. He hoped he never had to go back there again.

"I love you," she said suddenly. The words took himby surprise for a moment, but he smiled sweetly.

"I love you too, Emma," he answered, and bent his head to kiss her properly for the first time in what felt like an age.

oO0Oo

Skulduggery walked into the kitchen the next morning to make Valkyrie her breakfast, dressed in his favourite deep blue suit with a crisp white shirt and tie. He chose to go without a hat, the suit alone was spectacular enough.

"Morning," said Art from where he sat at the breakfast bar. Skulduggery tilted his head.

"Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I do believe we buried you in the garden not so long ago. You're dead."

"So are you."

"Yes, I know, but we've established that I should be in the ground somewhere and gotten over the fact that I'm not. My point now is that you should be in your grave. Why aren't you dead?"

"That's not a nice thing to say to a fellow coffin dodger, Dad," Emma tutted as she wandered in. It was early morning and the rest of the house was quiet.

"Am I seeing things?" Skulduggery asked.

"Considering you don't have eyes, that'd be a bit difficult," Emma grinned. Skulduggery folded his arms across his chest.

"You've been spending way too much time with your mother young lady. Now, on a more serious note, please explain how your dead boyfriend is sitting at our kitchen table with a coffee in his hand, before I go wake your mother to tell her I seem to be having some sort of belated mental breakdown."

"This is how I'm alive," Art said, lifting his shirt. In the morning light, his scar stood out against his skin, ugly and ragged looking, blackened in places like it'd been burnt into him.

"Ah, the symbol of Azhdeha, that would explain plenty. Well, if that particular symbol had ever been proven to work. Which apparently, it has been. Unless you're some ghastly hallucination I've conjured up."

"Ghastly? Charming," Art said, but he grinned.

"In any case, welcome back," and Emma felt Skulduggery smile, even if she couldn't see it.

Alice walked into the kitchen sleepily, rubbing her eyes like a small child. She saw Art, and carried on what she was doing. She opened the fridge and pulled out an apple collected from one of the trees outside; since the supermarkets had shut long ago, the fridge was sustained by magic, much like the rest of the appliances in the house, and used only to keep the fruit they grew in the orchard fresh for a few more days.

Alice was taking a bite of her apple when she realised who she'd seen. She whirled, dropping the fruit. Art just waited. When she said nothing, he waved.

"Tell me he's really there and I'm not going crazy."

"This all a figment of your imagination, go back to sleep Alice," Skulduggery said, waving his arms around. Alice raised an eyebrow.

"You're such a goon," she muttered.

"You two need keeping away from Valkyrie," he muttered. "Neither of you respect my authority."

"I'm your sister-in-law," Alice pointed out. "You have no authority. Now why is there adead guy in our kitchen?"

"I'm not actually dead anymore you know."

"Gah, he talks," Alice said, jumping at the sound of his voice.

"It's a miracle!" Skulduggery exclaimed.

"Do you ever shut up?" Alice asked, distracted again.

"No. I love the sound of my voice too much to shut up. To stop speaking would be to deprive the world of sweet music."

"How on earth your ego fits into this kitchen, I'll never know."

"Wonders never cease," Skulduggery replied.

"This still doesn't change the fact that I helped bury him and yet he's still sat in our kitchen drinking out of my favourite mug," Alice answered, pointing at Art.

"It's a long story, and it's effort to explain. Also it's too early in the morning for me so can we please just accept that he's here and move on? I'm getting a headache from it all and I've only been downstairs five minutes," Emma said, pinching the bridge of her nose to ease the throbbing.

Tanith walked into the kitchen, saw Art, and stopped. She stared at him. She stared some more. She turned away to grab an apple from the fridge, and then turned round like she expected him to be gone. When he wasn't, she frowned.

"What did I miss?"

"Everything," Skulduggery said.

"Nothing, I'll explain later," Emma answered, shooting a scowl at Skulduggery. He was in a particularly annoying mood today.

"Tanith, I'd like you to meet my hallucination. His name is Roger. Ignore the fact that he looks like our dear departed Jonathan." Art blinked.

"He's not called Roger," Emma said.

"Roger wants to say hi but he's too shy," Skulduggery continued.

"Erm..." Art looked confused. "I'm not sure what's going on right now."

"Roger's confused," Skulduggery said. "Poor guy," he shook his head sadly. Tanith just stared, clearly bewildered. "That's the thing with imaginary friends, they find it so hard to grasp the concept of them being imaginary. Poor, poor Roger."

"Oh my God, Skulduggery, seriously. _Shut up,_" Emma muttered.

"Even Emma doesn't understand that Roger isn't real. Poor, crazy Emma."

"Skulduggery..."

"Don't listen to her objections Tanith, she'll make you crazy too."

"For God's sake. Come on Art, let's go somewhere that makes sense," she said, and took his hand, leading him out of the kitchen.

"Bye Roger!" Skulduggery called cheerfully.


	30. You're such a goon!

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 30...**_

_**Helloooo :) No delays, gonna keep the ball rolling :) Enjoy!**_

oO0Oo

"What the Hell was that?" Alice asked, scowling at Skulduggery.

"My sparkling sense of humour." Tanith snorted, amused.

"You are the most annoying talking skeleton I've ever met," Alice retorted.

"I'm the _only_ talking skeleton you've ever met."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm the only magical talking skeleton on the planet. Unless you imagined another me."

"Why would I imagine another you?"

"Because one of me just isn't enough?" Tanith choked on her apple, giggling.

"One of you is too much," was Alice's reply.

"Ah yes, for the lesser mortals my sheer wonder is too much to behold."

"Lesser mortals?" Tanith spluttered, unable to control her shaking shoulders as Alice raised an eyebrow at Skulduggery. "Skul, you need a reality check. And a straight jacket."

"Straight jackets are white. White doesn't suit me. I'm perfectly happy with my suit jacket."

"Can you stop now?" Tanith gasped. "I'm gonna wee if you don't."

"What an odd thing to say," Skulduggery mused.

_"You're_ odd," Alice told him.

"I'm fabulous."

"I'm leaving."

"Can you make sure Roger is okay? I think I forgot to feed him."

"Goon," Alice muttered, and left the kitchen. Tanith straightened up, sniggering.

"You're terrible," she said. "And stop calling Art Roger, he's only just come back from the dead and already you're giving him an existential complex. We've only just got Gordon to stop doubting his importance, we don't need Art doing it too."

"We don't need Art doing what?" Valkyrie asked, padding into the kitchen.

"What is it with the women in this house? It's six in the morning, do none of you sleep?" Skulduggery asked, head tilted.

"Sleep is overrated," Valkyrie and Tanith said together, and then looked at one another and grinned.

"What don't we need Art doing?" Valkyrie asked when she was done grinning.

"Doubting his own existence." Tanith took another bite of her apple.

"How can he do that if he's dead?" Valkyrie frowned.

"He's not dead anymore."

"Come again?"

"He's not dead. He's alive. Emma used some weird symbol on him. He's walking around like nothing happened," Tanith said. "It was weird, I walked into the kitchen this morning and he was sat at the breakfast bar like he never left. I thought I was going mad. Doesn't help that your husband was winding everyone up."

"What were you doing?" Valkyrie asked.

"Explaining that Roger needed to accept his imaginary-ness and embrace it. It's a part of who he is...or isn't, I suppose," Skulduggery said innocently.

"...Roger? Who's Roger?"

"My imaginary friend. I think I forgot to feed him," the skeleton sounded mournful.

"I'm so confused. What does your imaginary friend have to do with a dead kid?"

"Nothing at all," Tanith answered, interrupting before Skulduggery could speak and confuse the situation further. "Skulduggery tried to convince Alice that Art was a figment of her imagination. Then he decided to call him Roger. Now apparently he's a pet that needs feeding as well." Valkyrie looked at her husband, eyebrows raised.

"You worry me sometimes, Skulduggery." He said nothing, just inclined his head a little, and she knew he was grinning.

oO0Oo

Eyren was in Gordon's study, reading one of Gordon's books, completely absorbed when China found him. She entered the room quietly and he looked up. Despite his adult body, she could see the youth in his face. To any mage it was obvious that he was very young; his eyes still held that childlike trust she was so used to finding in the faces of young children. But there was a keen intelligence there too, in the depths of those brown eyes.

"China," he said when he finally noticed she was standing there. "How are you?"

"I'm coping," she said, smiling weakly as she crossed the room to ease herself into Gordon's chair. Eyren watched her move around gingerly and his brow creased.

"You're not," he said. "You're weak. You're weak because of me."

"I'm weak because I am repaying a debt I've owed to your father for a very long time. If this is the consequence of removing my guilt then so be it." She looked at him with those impossibly pale blue eyes. "You look like him you know. You have his face, the same high cheekbones. And that mischievous smile that got him anything he wanted back when he had flesh." Her smile widened. "It's like looking at him before the war, having you stood in front of me."

"My father looked like this? I always assumed he was blonde."

"Blonde? Heavens, no. He was quite the dark haired beauty way back when. Much like your mother is now." Eyren smiled at the mention of his mother.

"She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen," he said, his beam lighting up his face. Yes, he was still obviously so very young; only a child looked that way when they thought of their mother. "I thought perhaps she might not love me after Grimm changed me. There was so much I didn't understand at first, but I knew she might never look at me the same." He looked distant for a moment. "I still remember how warm it was when she held me, how safe I felt. I miss that. I wish I could've had a childhood. I'm barely a few weeks old and already I'm an adult. It's so hard to grasp."

"Valkyrie will always love you, child. So will your father. You are the greatest gift they could ever have been given, in your mother's words." China gestured for him to come closer. He came round the desk and perched on the edge of it, watching China. She looked so delicate, and thinner than she had been a few weeks ago. The bones of her hands looked so delicate, like a birds wing. Dark circles rested beneath her beautiful eyes, the skin slightly stretched over her beautiful face.

All of a sudden, Eyren became aware of an insistent prodding in the back of his mind, a nagging voice that warned him something bad was about to happen. His mind flashed to the wards scattered around the outsides of the mansion.

"Do you feel that?" he asked China. She nodded.

"The wards. Notorious has found them."


	31. Breech

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 31...**_

oO0Oo

Grimm tore his way through the last of the wards and surged forwards, into the grounds of the Edgley mansion. No smile played around his lips. No humour at all. He was there because his hand had been forced; the girl had revived his son much quicker than anticipated. Which meant the Skeleton and Valkyrie had been given an opportunity to corrupt Artemis further. Grimm had to move fast, while Art was still getting used to being alive again and his mind as easily impressionable. If he left him with the skeleton, Artemis would be lost to him.

But this would be a dangerous battle. Melancholia was dead, there was no one to distract Vile or Darquesse, should they surface again. This battle would be a fair one. He had no advantage over the pair, and he knew that all too well. But he needed his son.

oO0Oo

Valkyrie heard a great tearing noise as China's wards came tumbling down, and immediately she was running to find her son. She knew where he'd be. Taking the stairs two at a time, she slammed into the study and grabbed him.

"Eyren, take China and hide in the cellar. You need to stay there, and China, not matter what happens, do not leave. And stay away from the caves, that wouldn't be any smarter than going out there and facing Grimm alone," Valkyrie instructed. China nodded and took Eyren's arm; he was too young for battle. He was terrified. Valkyrie couldn't help herself, she pulled him into a fierce hug. "I love you, kid," she said as she released him, before she left the room at a sprint to join the battle.

Skulduggery was already outside, throwing everything he had at Grimm. He sidestepped as a column of sizzling purple light englufed the spot he'd just been standing in. Manipulating the air, he rose off the ground and circled above Grimm's head. Tanith was slashing and swiping with her sword, unable to get close. Alice was on Grimm's other side, mirroring Tanith's fighting techniques, lashing a kick here, an elbow there. Solomon and Ghastly stood together, Ghastly throwing punches where he could, Solomon brandishing his cane. Grimm was surrounded, and yet he was still winning. Emma and Art weren't in the fighting yet.

Valkyrie closedher eyes and took a breath, calling on the darkness inside her. When nothing stirred, she panicked, wondering if perhaps her power was gone. But no, she could feel it there, buzzing through her gauntleted right hand, that cold energy thrumming up her arms and coalescing in the centre of her chest. Since the Reckoning, Darquesse had once again become a closed off, separate part of Valkyrie that she couldn't access.

_Valkyrie. It's been a while._

That cold voice in here ear. 'I need your help.'

_My help? Why should I help?_

'Because you don't want to die any more than I do.'

_I did what I wanted to do. _

'Darquesse, please.' Valkyrie felt the door to Darquesse's mental cage swing wide open, and yet Darquesse refused to surface.

_You need me. Say it._

'I need you. I need you to help me.'

_And you set me free?_

'...I do."

_Yes._

Darquesse burst forth with more venom than Valkyrie had ever known, and all at once she rose from the ground, shadows whipping around angrily, a cold smile on her face.

oO0Oo

"Grimm!" Darquesse called. The demigod swatted at Tanith, knocking her back, and turned to see Darquesse floating in the air. "Come and get me," she grinned. He snarled and launched himself at her, black wings beating. He drove her into the ground and she laughed as her spine fractured, healing before it even finished breaking. The darkness inside her flourished, and she pressed her metal hand to Grimm's chest. He shot backwards and she rose smoothly to her feet, walking on shadows.

Skulduggery threw twin streams of fire at Notorious, who snarled and deflected them, sending them screaming towards Ghastly, forcing him to dive away. Solomon disappeared in a swathe of shadows and reappeared a few feet away. Grimm kicked out and Tanith was sent crashing into Alice. Valkyrie snarled with Darquesse, and she pressed her hand to ground. The earth rumbled and exploded upwards around Grimm, encasing him in walls of rock. The Earth element, in all its glory. Darquesse was quietly impressed, but not for long. That blinding purple light disintegrated the stony prison, sending shards of slate pulsing outwards. Several of them struck Darquesse in the stomach, slicing the soft flesh. One caught Solomon in the side of the head, knocking him unconscious. Another hit Alice above her eye, removing her from the fight too. Tanith and Ghastly ducked, covering their heads, and Skulduggery was already well out of reach.

A shout from behind caused a particularly violent looking symbol to burn blinding yellow on Grimm's face. He screamed and threw Emma off her feet with a club of pure energy. She cried out and tapped her thumbs together, curling up into a ball as she landed to absorb the impact. Activating the marks on her hands allowed her to move so much faster than before. She zipped over and under Grimm's attacks, taunting him.

Art kicked his father in face and dodged back, as Valkyrie followed his blow with one of her own, lashing her boot heel into Grimm's nose. She felt the bone crunch, but when she looked his face was as perfect as ever. Now it was his turn.

Grimm punched her so hard she felt her cheek bone crack, and Darquesse growled angrily. A knife of shadow sliced Grimm open from his ear to his groin, with the intention of spilling his guts all over the grass. Instead the wound closed over the second the blade left his skin, not even a drop of blood escaping. Skulduggery swooped overhead and snapped his palm, the wave of displaced air smashing Grimm into the ground. Artemis pulled out a short, wicked looking blade and sank it hilt-deep into his father's chest while Emma moved Solomon and Alice out of harms way, laying their unconscious bodies under the shelter of a tree.

Grimm pulled the blade free and threw it back, striking Tanith in the hip. She fell back, dropping her Katana, and Darquesse picked up the long, sleek blade, firing it at the demigod like a rock from a shadowy catapult. It sliced through his stomach, the blade protruding from his back, and the shadows wrapped around it extended, working away at him, trying to tear him apart from the inside.

He yanked the blade free and stabbed his son, before slamming a fist down on the boy's head. He threw the unconscious kid away like a rag doll, and Emma yelped, running to him. Before Grimm could lay into her, Skulduggery came crashing down in a volley of elbows and knees, pummeling Grimm. The winged man grabbed the skeleton and hurled him away as Valkyrie came back, halfway between Darquesse and herself, and sent a punch into his jaw that rocked his head back. Grimm cursed and lifted her off the ground, launching himself into the air. He tried to toss her back towards a bone-smashing landing like a rugby ball, but Darquesse kept her body suspended, floating peacefully. They glared at each other warily.

"What are you doing here?" Darquesse asked. "What do you want?"

"I want what I always wanted. To rule."

"And how does this help you?"

"I came for my son."

"Oh, so you are capable of love."

"And yours." Darquesse shot him a dark, bone chilling glare.

"Over my dead body."

"That can be arranged."

"Like Hell it can," she growled, and a wave of darkness slammed into him, knocking him away from her. She laughed, her gauntlet humming with so much power she felt like she might explode. She followed him through the air and punched him, again and again, just like Skulduggery had taught Valkyrie.

And then Notorious vanished. Darquesse stopped, frowning, and looked at the ground. Grimm was there. And he had a piece of her husband in each hand. She screamed in anger and shot towards him, but he laughed, and vanished.

Skulduggery was gone.


	32. The Final Battle

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 32...**_

_**Going for three chapters in one night, let's see if I can do it! Anyways enjoy. And thanks for all the reviews guys, much appreciated! **_

oO0Oo

Eyren came running out of the house as soon as Grimm was gone, searching for Valkyrie. Darquesse lowered herself to the ground, stopping a few inches off, shadows whipping and thrashing around her. She was angry, but a pang of excitement fluttered deep in her chest. She knew what Grimm planned to do, and it excited her. He was going to torture Skulduggery into releasing Lord Vile. Darquesse wanted to see him again.

"Mum!" Eyren ran to her, stopping a foot or two away, looking frightened. Darquesse tilted her head.

"You're Eyren." He frowned.

"You know I am. I'm your son."

_"Valkyrie's_ son. I'm Darquesse. Her alter ego, so to speak."

"You're the world killer," he breathed, eyes wide. "Why aren't you killing me?"

"Valkyrie is still in here," she said, tapping her head. "If I killed you, she'd shut me out again." She looked around. "I'm bored." She floated over to where Art lay on the ground, stomach split open. A few feet away, Solomon and Alice lay unconscious. Emma knelt beside Art, trying to tend to his wounds. Darquesse sighed, going against her darker nature to appease Valkyrie's nagging, and a creeping mist swept along the ground, soaking into all those who were injured. Their wounds closed over rapidly, bruises fading. They sat up, all three of them.

"You healed them," Eyren said.

"Well done. For a smart kid, you say a lot of obvious things."

"Sometimes obvious things need saying."

"Do they?"

"I assume so. Otherwise no one would say them." The others were looking on in disbelief; Eyren was having a civilised conversation with a planet killer. Well. Almost civilised.

"You're as annoying as your mother."

"I try."

"And the skeleton. You're as annoying as him too."

"Thank you." Darquesse narrowed her eyes.

"Shut up." Eyren did. The others were gathered around her now, waiting warily. Darquesse rolled her eyes and sat cross legged in the air. She stretched out both her hands; Tanith's katana and the short blade were pulled into her grasp. She passed them back to their owners and waited for someone to say something that wouldn't irritate her.

"What now?" Emma asked quietly.

"I find Grimm and kill him. And you guys do whatever it is you normally do," she said.

"If you could kill Grimm alone you'd have done it already," Eyren said.

"He's right. All you did was let him kidnap Skulduggery," Art put in.

"Excuse me? I was the only one in that fight not being knocked around. You're all alive because of me."

"Can we have Valkyrie back now?" Tanith asked.

"No. I've missed being free. I'm not ready to go back into her mind just yet." Darquesse turned and floated towards the house, landing lightly on the grass and passing through the front door. For a moment she wondered what would happen if she opened the caves and set one of the monsters free on everyone in the house, but Valkyrie quickly shot that notion down.

Eyren followed her into the house, jogging to keep up. He grabbed her hand, and she turned to look at him, ready to punch him, until she saw his expression. His pupils were dilated, his face a mask of surprise, and Darquesse was dimly aware of Valkyrie telling her that Eyren learnt through touch.

And just like that, all the childish youth left his gaze.

"If you go to that castle alone, you'll only succeed in killing my father," Eyren said. Darquesse ignored Valkyrie's distress and answered him.

"And who else exactly do you suggest I go with?"

"Me."

"You?" She laughed out loud. "You're a child."

"With all your magical abilities." He rose off the ground about a foot.

"Clever. Real clever." She rose to meet him. And snapped his neck.

Valkyrie screamed inside her as Eyren landed in a heap, but Darquesse watched with detached fascination as the break quickly knit itself back together and he rose again.

"All your abilities," he repeated. "And all your anger. You need me."

"Fine. Come on, son. It's time to teach you to fight." And Darquesse slammed Valkyrie's cage door shut, blotting her out completely.

oO0Oo

_The Detective screamed as Grimm twisted his bones, took him apart, rebuilt him and broke him over and over again, but he refused to become Lord Vile. He wouldn't call on that part of his nature anymore. Not ever again._

_"You're only making this worse for yourself, skeleton. I'll strip your mind apart again, permanently this time. All you have to do to end this is call out Lord Vile."_

_"Never."_

_"Suit yourself." White hot agony seared Skulduggery's bones as blinding white-purple light engulfed him, igniting his limbs. His beautiful suit was ragged and charred, almost burned away. Skulduggery trembled weakly, unable to move. _

_Notorious needed him to willingly don the armour. If he was willing, Vile wouldn't turn on him. But he could see the skeleton would never willingly accept his past. Grimm was going to have to force him._

_An Underling entered the room cautiously, carrying a black case. Grimm took the case and set it on the ground in front of the skeleton, unfastening the latches and pulling back the lid. Lord Vile's armour lay nestled inside, and Skulduggery could see his reflection in the plain breast plate. The surface of the armour shifted, sending ripples across the metal like water. Grimm lifted the mask from the box and held it out in front of Skulduggery, who turned his face away._

_"Last chance, skeleton. You wear the armour yourself, or I make you wear it."_

_"Go to Hell."_

_"As you wish." Grimm grabbed Skulduggery's jaw tightly and slipped the mask onto his gleaming skull. The skeleton tried to fight it, but the blackness seeped into his bones, pulling his darker self to the surface._

_Lord Vile shattered his shackles and stood silently. Grimm handed him the breast plate, which he clipped into place without a word. The rest of the armour oozed from the breast plate, encasing the skeleton in an impenetrable shell._

_"I feel like we've been here before, Notorious," he said in that chilling, hoarse whisper._

_"Indeed we have, old friend. Indeed we have."_

oO0Oo

Darquesse kicked open door after door, unable to find Skulduggery in Grimm's castle. And then she welt a wave of pure cold, and she knew Lord Vile had returned.

"What was that?" Eyren asked.

"That was your father donning his battle gear." She grinned. "Get ready to get your ass kicked."

She headed towards the source of the black energy, and sure enough, there was Vile in all his glory, standing beside Grimm and pulsating raw, pure energy. He really was a thing of the most morbid beauty. Darquesse beamed sweetly.

"How nice to see you again, Lord Vile."

"Darquesse." He bowed his head respectfully.

"I'm assuming you're not on my side?" Instead of answering, Vile lifted a club of shadows and smashed her into the ground. "Thought not," she said, and rose up to hover an inch or two above the ground. Eyren rose with her, and Grimm laughed.

"I knew it wouldn't be long before you corrupted him, Darquesse."

"Oh I wouldn't say corrupted, more educated," she smiled, and launched herself at Grimm. Eyren went for Lord Vile and the battle began to rage.

All around them, the walls of the castle began to fall where Eyren was thrown against the webs, or Lord Vile sent a hail of shadows that missed their target. Grimm's blinding white light tore huge holes in the rooms, and Darquesse made a mess...well, because she liked to cause trouble. Grim snarled as she knocked the wall through into his bedroom and purposefully dismantled his bed, crushing it in a vice of shadows.

"Oh look!" she exclaimed. "Firewood!"

"You brat!" Grimm cursed, hurling pure energy at her. The first few bolts missed, but the last found its target, hurling her right through the wall and into the next room. She was up in a flash, just as Lord Vile came crashing into her, blasted backwards by Eyren. She punched him and shot upwards, tearing several floors apart above her as she emerged into the night air. Grimm followed her, his great wings beating furiously. He could fly justas fast as her, and when he crashed into her, she felt like she'd been hit by a jumbo jet. He ripped at her with his deadly energy, sizzled her skin and broke her bones.

She fought back, burning him with fire, brushing his ribs with displaced air, piercing him all over with blades of shadow. But he could heal faster than her. Her attacks were vicious and cunning; a lassoo of shadow to choke him, lashing whips to slice his skin, a cloying mist to fill his lungs and squeeze the air right out of him, btu the wounds she inflicted healed too quickly to do any serious damage. And with each attack, Darquesse was more and more tempted to unleash everything she had.

And Vile came out of nowhere, pursued by Eyren, who was hurling solid blocks of blackness at him. Vile slammed into Darquesse and took her out of Grimms way, high into the clouds. Eyren switched his attack to the winged man, throwing vicious blows around with surprising venom and accuracy for such a young mage; his blows rocked Grimm's head back, leaving him dazed.

Vile took Darquesse so high that the oxygen became thin enough to make her a little dizzy. And then he released her. He was floating there in front of her, close enough to touch, and she thought perhaps Skulduggery had returned. But no, he was still Lord Vile, all thrashing darkness and stony silence. And there was something electric between them.

He grabbed her roughly and she swung a punch that should've broken his jaw, but it did nothing. The mask melted back into the breats plate, and Lord Vile kissed Darquesse. It was a moment of impact, like two tornadoes colliding. It wasn't gentle either, his hands gripped her hard enough to bruise, and he wasnot soft in his eagerness to kiss her. She found the gaps in the sides of his breast plate and hooked her fingers through his ribs. He hissed in pain, but their embrace did not break.

Darquesse grinned against his teeth and sent a pulse of darkness through him. He shot back, away from her and she laughed. And then Grimm grabbed her gauntleted right hand and she dropped from the sky as suddenly as Vile had kissed her. Damn. He'd done it distract her, so Grimm could move in.

A familiar, painfully cold energy was building inside her, and Grimm was grinning down at her.

"This is where you bring about the second Reckoning, child. And this time, you will not survive." The pain was excruciating, zipping up and down her arm and into her spine like she was hooked up to a live supply of electricity. It grew colder with each wave, so much more potent than before. The gauntlet could not limit her this time, and Grimm forced the energy to build and peak and build again, and Darquesse felt Valkyrie screaming as her body came apart.

"Leave my mother alone, you bastard," Eyren said, appearing at Grimm's side. He grabbed Darquesse's hand and Grimm's completing the circuit, and flooded all his own energy into the circle. He directed every last iota of strength at Grimm, and Darquesse did so too. Every ounce of strength, every last wisp of power flowed into Grimm.

It wasn't working, impossibly, he was still withstanding all that pure power. And Eyren was beginning to weaken, just like Darquesse. She could feel her consciousness slipping as she poured her last reserves into him.

A sudden burst of cold black energy shot through her and Eyren, and Lord Vile rose by their sides, sending his own power screaming into Grimm's straining body. The muscles on Grimm's kneck knotted, arms straining, veins pulsing as the energy tore at him from within.

And in a split second he imploded in a blinding, brilliant flash of whitehot, silent, sizzling power. His body was stripped apart, blown into the stratosphere, and he was gone.


	33. A New Beginning

_**From The Ashes We Rise: Chapter 33...**_

oO0Oo

Everything hurt. Absolutely everything. Valkyrie's limbs felt swollen. Her head pounded rhythmically in time with the blood beating in her ears, but she was alive, just about. And she was in control again; Darquesse seemed to be gone for the moment. And Grimm, was he dead? Had he somehow survived all that impossible energy ripping his body to pieces?

"She's awake." Valkyrie was vaguely aware of China's soft, lilting voice to her left.

"Will she be alright?" Skulduggery.

"She's been through a lot, you all have. But I should think so, yes."

"Thank God. How's Eyren?" Valkyrie tensed at the mention of her son and hissed in pain.

"I don't know what exactly Darquesse did to him, but whatever she did saved his life. If he'd been involved in that blast, he would've died without that extra strength she gave him." Valkyrie heard China shift slightly. "Your family is still in one piece, Skulduggery."

Valkyrie opened her eyes; she was in her bed, propped up on a mound of pillows. Skulduggery was on the bed beside her, barely moving, and China was in a chair at their side. It was dark outside the window, which meant it was probably the middle of the night.

"Where's my son?" she asked, her voice coming out as a hoarse croak. How long had she been sleeping?

"He's in his own room, resting. All three of you took one hell of a beating," China said softly, keeping her voice low to avoid waking anyone.

"And the others? Is everyone else okay? Alice? Emma?"

"They're fine, sweetheart." It was Skulduggery, reassuring and gentle. She groaned.

"I feel like a giant bruise."

"You'll feel like that for quite a while, I should think," China said. Her beautiful face was thin and haggard-looking, but she was smiling. "You'll certainly be bedridden for a week or two."

"How long was I unconscious?"

"You were out for roughly two weeks," Skulduggery said.

"Two weeks? That's practically a coma!"

"Ssh," he soothed. "I only came round yesterday myself, Val. Eyren was the first to wake up. He was only asleep for four days. Five at most."

"Where's Grimm?" She tried to sit up a little straighter, hissing when the movement pulled her skin. She felt like she'd been burnt.

"He's dead," Skulduggery said. "It took a hell of a lot of magic, but all that energy of yours, added to whatever Eyren and myself pumped into him stripped his body apart. It would seem that even a demigod can't withstand our awesome power."

"So it's over?"

"It's over," Skulduggery said, and China rose from her chair and left quietly.

"I thought we were going to die, Skul. He nearly killed everyone using my magic again. I was so scared."

"You don't need to be scared now, he's gone. We're all safe, and it'll be a long time before anything as evil as Grimm comes back to plague us again." Skulduggery cheered up suddenly. "On the bright side, we can add killing a demigod to our repertoire. How many people can say that now, hmm?"

"Fair point," she chuckled. There was a tap on the door, and Art entered quietly.

"Hello Roger! I was beginning to think you'd starved," the skeleton said, waving cheerily. Art frowned, confused.

"Ignore him, his near death experience drove him nuts," Valkyrie chuckled.

"I just came to say thank you for going to back to that castle to find me. And thank you for bringing me back here to be buried," he said quietly. "If you hadn't, I might not have been close enough to reach Emma in her sleep, and I'd still be dead." He went to leave again, and then stopped. "And thanks for killling my nut job father. I've wanted to do it for years but never been strong enough. The world owes you, all three of you." He smiled. "So goodnight, I'm sorry if I disturbed you."

"Night Art."

"Bye Roger."

"When are you going to stop calling him that?"

"When it stops being funny."

"And when will it stop being funny?"

"When I get bored of my own hilarity."

"That's not going to happen, is it?"

"Oh, heaven's no. I'm far too funny."

oO0Oo

**_And that's the end of a long and epic journey guys! Thank you all so much for the amazing reviews, if any of you have any requests or ideas for a new story you'd like me to write then I'd be happy to oblige :) Until then keep looking out for my stuff, there might be more Skulduggery to come :) The response has been amazing, thanks again :) 3_**


End file.
